Maxie J is using her platform to teach other women how to build e-commerce brands.
ScaleCOM Club, an education platform for women building product-based e-commerce brands, is launching with Sell With Strategy, Sis, a live masterclass on the marketing framework Maxie has used to build her business.
“When I was building my business, and I was struggling, I was broke, going to Bible study, and going to church every day, praying to God. I felt like I needed a miracle. I felt like I did all I could in the flesh, and one thing that I promised to God in those moments was that if He was to trust me with success, I promised that my success would make room for others to win,” Maxie told AfroTech Culture in an exclusive interview ahead of the launch.
“That is one of the promises I’m keeping to God, because I think a lot of people do that quite often where you finally get the blessing and you finally get in your stride, and you kind of forget about all the things that you either have to sacrifice or what you said you would do,” she continued. “I just want to keep my word on that because I do believe that just as quickly as God decided to trust me, He can take it all as well. When I was coming up in the game, I didn’t have reliable resources that told me the exact name, my exact next steps, not surface-level advice like, ‘You just gotta post more, and I’ll be a millionaire.’ That’s the type of advice I was getting when I was coming up in the game, not the systems, or ‘You need this software. You need this system.’ It’s very specific, and I want to give people actionable next steps, actually, to move the needle forward to their success.”
On building a multimillion-dollar brand with no outside investors
Maxie is the founder of Ellaé Lisqué, a luxury fashion e-commerce brand known for body-contouring evening wear, curve-conscious silhouettes and special-occasion statement pieces.
According to Maxie J, she built the business into a multimillion-dollar company without investors or retail backing.
Black women founders have long had limited access to venture funding, and Maxie put everything she had into her business. She now wants others to have the tools to build from scratch.
“I had no clue how to even go after funding,” she recalled. “I took what I had, and that’s what I teach people. Take what you have and go with it, and God will meet your efforts. But you have to get up and go. You can’t just keep praying for a blessing and hope it falls from the sky. We gotta be like, ‘Listen, God, this is where I want my business to go, but in the meantime I’m going to take what I have and get there inch by inch, little by little, the best I can.’”
She added, “For me, I just took what I had. I took my personal story before this whole founder-led business. Ten years ago, no one was doing influencer marketing or founder-led businesses. Storytelling as a marketing tool came to me as common sense. When results drove my community, I started my business with no money. I had nothing, so I just went to my friends on Instagram. Back then, having ten thousand followers was like having a million. So I was like, if you have ten thousand followers, I’m gonna have you in my photo shoot. My friends do hair and makeup; I’m gonna book people with at least ten thousand followers, and everyone on set has to tag the brand when they tag their work. I did that for every photo shoot that I had. Everyone, from the models to the makeup artist to the hair stylist to the photographer to the videographer, had a contract requiring them to post their work and tag the brand, and that’s how I built the brand’s awareness. The brand’s Instagram. Everything. That was called influencer marketing. But I was doing that before it was even called that.”
Her openness about the brand’s beginnings also helped draw in customers. According to Maxie J, she started it with $500.
How ScaleCOM Club works
Online business coaching has drawn skepticism over the years.
ScaleCOM begins with a one-time masterclass, Sell With Strategy, Sis, and leads into a monthly membership priced at $97. Maxie J says her goal is to reach 100,000 women.
“I have an operational manager that will manage the community, specializing in keeping up with where the students are in the journey of the course, encouraging them to complete the course, finish the lessons at the end of each module, and collecting the results,” Maxie explained. “Not only are we doing that because we want people to have results, but we also want to leverage people’s results to continue to bring people through that funnel to reach the 100,000 women.”
“My community is driven by results,” she continued. “We’re not just here to be like, ‘Oh, let’s see how many people we can get to pay the $97.’ The goal is to keep as many people in the funnel as possible, and bring as many people in as possible. The only way I can keep bringing people in and keeping them is by delivering results. That is our entire business model. I have specialists in place to make sure that we’re doing that, and I will also be meeting with the people who sign up biweekly, as a group.”
Through the biweekly group meetings, members can ask Maxie questions directly, and she will still offer one-on-one coaching for a more tailored experience.
Maxie defines success as women who take her course and use the resources to build online momentum and turn viewers into sales.
“Not only do they learn the strategy to be able to do that, but I want them to meet each other. I want to build community. I want more women to collaborate,” Maxie concluded. “It’s a lot of weird competitive things that happen outside in this world, and I can’t be concerned about what’s happening in the world, but I can start with what I have and who I have. If I can show women how to collaborate, not be in competition with each other, and how we can help each other, that’s half the battle.”
She added, “I’ve always been so free with my knowledge and my resources. I’ve never been a gatekeeper because I feel God blesses us to bless others. What’s meant for me is for me. To me, success is reaching 100,000 people who can say they came through my funnel and made some money. Whether it is six figures, seven figures, or five figures, you made some money.”
