How Lisa Carter Built a Life and Business Around Purpose
Lisa Carter has never taken the straight path. Today she is the Client Success Director and founding partner of PeakWaves Studio, a marketing and growth agency that helps small businesses and nonprofits rethink strategy, innovate their offerings, and bring it all to life through integrated marketing. But behind her professional title is a story that winds through bail bonds, alarm systems, extreme skiing, accounting, law school, consulting, and battles with health challenges that could have stopped her—if she had let them.
Growing Up in Business
Carter’s first lessons in entrepreneurship came early. Her parents ran two small businesses in Ohio: a bail bond company and an alarm company. By the age of 10, she was already answering phones for bail clients when the answering service couldn’t reach her parents.
She learned to qualify clients, negotiate terms, and dispatch her parents—all before she was a teenager. “My parents taught me that customer service is what pays for vacations and private schooling,” she recalls. Those lessons stuck. From watching her parents run 24-hour businesses, Carter internalized the importance of responsiveness and the weight of responsibility. “It made me very aware that the customer comes first,” she says.
The Long Road to Marketing
After business school at CU Boulder, Carter flirted with multiple paths: she worked for Pricewaterhouse in its emerging enterprise division, co-founded an online accounting firm in the early days of internet banking, and even went to law school—not to practice law, but to sharpen her analytical and consulting skills.
Each pivot brought her closer to what she now recognizes as her core gift: helping organizations innovate and grow. By 2007, she had fully transitioned into marketing, inspired by the concept of “blended value”—the idea that businesses should be measured not just by profit, but also by their impact on society and the environment “It resonated with me because I’d written in law school about how companies should account for environmental costs,” she says. That conviction shaped PeakWaves Studio, which Carter co-founded with a colleague she met through Catchafire, a platform connecting skilled professionals with nonprofits. “We bonded over sweat equity, collaboration, and wanting to do work that matters,” she explains.
Lisa also co-founded a very successful franchise alarm company with her mother after her parents’ divorce. This company became the fastest growing franchise in the network. Lisa stated “ we come full circle to her helping me with my business”.
Health Battles and Resilience
Carter’s journey hasn’t been without obstacles. She found out she had degenerative disc disorder, which forced her to work from a recliner; and later, a diagnosis of myasthenia gravis, a rare neurological condition that affects muscle strength. “All of a sudden, I had double vision, slurred speech, balance problems,” she recalls. A trip to the ER finally led to a diagnosis and treatment that brought the condition under control.
For Carter, these struggles are not detours but part of her purpose. “I’m just hitting my stride at 62,” she says. “Every challenge has prepared me for this moment.”
Full Circle
Perhaps the most surprising turn in her story is coming full circle with her mother the two now work together. Her mother, a certified health coach, became Peakwave’s first client and later a partner. “It’s kind of a dream come true,” Carter says. “Now we get to enjoy working together, without the stress of the past. She brings wisdom to the company and to my life.”
Building for Impact
At Peakwave, Carter continues to integrate everything she’s learned: marketing, consulting, customer service, and resilience. She and her team don’t just run campaigns; they help clients strengthen their sales process, discover new revenue streams, and refine the way they serve their customers.
For Carter, it’s about more than business. It’s about proving that setbacks—whether personal, professional, or health-related—don’t have to be the end of the story. “When something comes up, I latch onto it like a pit bull,” she says. “I don’t let go until I find a solution.”
Her journey is proof that success isn’t about avoiding struggle—it’s about moving
