Summer Deepe's Custom Cookie Orders Took a Week. One 2-Hour Class Paid the Same.

TL;DR:

• Summer Deepe, founder of Summer's Sweet Shoppe, joins Stu McLaren to explain how a self-taught cookie hobby became three memberships.

• One two-hour class, 10 seats, about $50 a ticket: roughly $500, the same as a week of custom orders.

• Online at the end of 2018, a course in 2019, then three memberships, including Cookie Classes to Cash at $67 a month.

• More than 40 of her videos passed a million views each and still produced almost no email leads. Stu explains why on the episode.

Most people take a cake decorating class at a craft store, make one lopsided cake, and never think about it again. Summer Deepe took one in 2010 and built three memberships out of it. On a recent episode of Marketing Your Business, Stu McLaren talks with Summer, founder of Summer's Sweet Shoppe, about how decorated sugar cookies became a business that teaches other decorators to get paid. Listen at podcast.stu.me or watch on Stu's YouTube channel.

Search how to start a cookie business and you'll find licensing rules and pricing spreadsheets. This episode covers the half nobody explains: what to sell once the orders start showing up, and why small niches hold the most loyal buyers.

Who is Summer Deepe?

Summer Deepe is the founder of Summer's Sweet Shoppe, a self-taught cookie decorator in Nashville who turned custom orders into in-person classes and then into three online memberships. She started with a cake decorating class at Michael's in 2010 and learned sugar cookie decorating from blogs, before YouTube tutorials existed.

The spark came at a farm-themed first birthday party, where Summer spotted decorated sugar cookies on the dessert table. As she puts it, "I was bitten by the cookie bug."

No video tutorials existed back then, so she pieced together the outline-and-flood technique from blog posts and practiced. Friends started asking for cookies for their events. Then they started paying. Summer walks through that stretch on the episode.

How Did a Cookie Hobby Become Three Memberships?

Teaching paid better than baking. One two-hour class with 10 spots at about $50 a ticket brought in roughly $500, the same as a full week of custom orders. Summer moved online at the end of 2018, launched a course in 2019, and built three memberships from there.

The push came from Laura, another cookie decorator two miles away, technically a competitor. "Summer, you've got to start teaching classes," Laura told her, then showed her exactly how to run one. The first class was promoted on social media alone. All 10 seats sold.

Six cookies, two hours of teaching, four or five hours of prep, roughly $500. That math got hard to ignore.

Summer's Cookie Academy launched in 2019, Next Level Cookie Club a month later, and Cookie Classes to Cash after that at $67 a month, with two brand-new done-for-you class plans every month for three to four years running. Members get slide decks, marketing templates, and student guides, and Summer breaks down what's in each month's plan on the episode.

Why Didn't 40 Viral Videos Grow Her Membership?

Because views aren't leads. Summer has more than 40 posts with over a million views each, but the videos had no hook text, no voiceover, and no call to action. On the episode, Stu diagnoses it as a lead-capture problem rather than a traffic problem, which is a much easier fix.

Nothing new has to be filmed, since the proven videos already exist. Adding on-screen hooks and one clear next step turns those time-lapse clips into email addresses, the difference between a viral post that entertains strangers and a lead magnet that converts followers into email subscribers.

Stu's full walkthrough of the fix is worth hearing in his own words, especially if your own Instagram traffic isn't turning into members.

What Should You Steal From This Episode?

Make the offer before you feel ready. Summer's first class sold out from social posts alone, and every business she runs today started with something she tried once to see what happened. When something works, her instinct is to do more of it instead of chasing the next new idea.

Her take on risk, from the episode: "What's the worst that could happen? Well, we learned a lesson. It didn't work. Onwards and upwards."

Watch or Listen to the Full Episode

The numbers, the pricing logic, and Stu's fix for the lead-capture gap all land better in the conversation itself. Listen at podcast.stu.me or watch it on Stu's YouTube channel.

And if the episode helps you, tell Summer. She's @summerssweetshoppe on Instagram.

About this post: The Membership.io team covers episodes of Stu McLaren's Marketing Your Business podcast, pulling out the business lessons worth stealing from the guests who lived them. This one comes from Stu's conversation with Summer Deepe, founder of Summer's Sweet Shoppe.