FROM BAIL BONDS TO
BLENDED VALUE
How Lisa Carter Built a
Life and Business
Around Purpose
By Dr. Julie Ducharme
isa 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.
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.
Growing Up in Business