The entrepreneur forging new paths in the world of business

The sky really is the limit for Lisa Carter, who worked against the odds to build a business empire from the ground up.

The entrepreneur founded Discussion Box in 2018, a company that grossed £1.2m in its first year of trading in 2021, and now has big ambitions for global expansion.

But the CEO, sales person and self-taught jewellery designer, who has caught the attention of stars such as Beyonce and Kelly Rowland, remains true to her roots in St Paul’s and is on a mission to break down barriers for other women and help them to get ahead in business.

Meeting in her office on Colston Avenue, a stone’s throw away from where the empty pedestal once home to the statue of Edward Colston stands, Lisa welcomes Bristol24/7 into the space that is a blend of tidy glass-topped desk and plush chairs, with a mini table and chairs set up with toys in the corner for her four-year-old daughter.

“I wanted to build a workspace that created a safe place,” Lisa explains.

“For people to show up authentically, but also a workspace that would have been something where I would have felt safe as a young mum had an employment opportunity in a place like this existed.”

The sky’s the limit for Lisa Carter, founder and CEO of Discussion Box – photo: SOSU

Lisa knew from a young age that she wanted to be an entrepreneur and says this was partly inspired by her late father, who owned his own cleaning business.

Her meteoric rise came after Lisa was forced to drop out of college at the age of 18 following the birth of her first child. She went on to use the “gift of the gab” – as her mum put it – to forge a successful career in the male-dominated industry of advertising sales for tech magazines.

After four years, in which Lisa climbed to the top as the company’s top international sales person, she decided to launch her own business.

“As a single mum, I knew it was on my shoulders to to build something that could create a sustainable future and a nice life for my son,” says the entrepreneur, reflecting on this time.

Having built up a successful business focusing on tech and emerging trends in print publications, Lisa was forced to pivot quickly in the wake of the 2008 economic crash when she turned her business to events. It was in 2010 that she started to take a hybrid approach and branched into digital and virtual online events.

“I just started to really understand how video technology works and the benefits of it,” explains Lisa.

It stood her in good stead for the launch of Discussion Box, two years before Zoom became a household name and the switch to virtual events catapulted the company to new levels.

Meanwhile, wanting a creative outlet, Lisa founded her own jewellery brand that officially launched during London Fashion Week in 2016.  NIKAO has been featured by Beyonce, Vogue, Forbes, InStyle, Zendaya, Cosmopolitan and more.

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It is partly funds from this brand that helped launch Discussion Box, an online events and discussion platform that has received no external funding and saw a growth of 49.97 per cent in gross revenue during the first quarter of its second year.

“Virtual events felt like the right thing to do,” explains Lisa. “It really removed the barriers that I was facing previously with in-person events.

“Aesthetics are everything for me – it needed to look the part and feel the part and have the right functionality. I actually designed the platform to look how I wanted it to look and found my own team of developers to build it.”

Lisa, who founded her business while looking after her baby daughter at home, has gone on to launch Spotlight, a platform built by women for women.

“The team is majority women and, as a woman, I understand the challenges in trying to rise to the top in your career. And there’s really just not enough women in business and in tech,” says the entrepreneur.

“So, it’s about pulling out the seat and giving an opportunity for women in business to have their voices heard, speak about the challenges in business and speak about technologies in a space designed for them by women.”

Leading on from this, Lisa has plans to launch the Spotlight Academy, running free workshops for women to help equip them with the skills needed to get ahead in business with a particular focus on selling. This will start in Bristol and then expand across the UK and beyond.

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The CEO has three children, Rory, 23, Ciro, 12, and Lilo, four, and believes becoming an entrepreneur should be a path for more women.

“It’s truly how we’re going to empower our daughters so that there is better equality and better representation for women in the workforce,” she says.

Rory now works as part of the Discussion Box team and is heading up development of SaaS (Software as a Service), which will be a subscription model of the online platform for businesses and communities to use to host their own events.

The company already has a global reach and there are plans to open offices abroad in the near future. Overseeing all from her office on Colston Avenue, Lisa won’t stop until Discussion Box is a household name.

Main photo: SOSU 

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