Featured on Strategic Thinkers Podcast™

Strategic Insight

"There's a difference between building a community and building an audience."

What We Learned

Kyle didn’t launch The Admin Bar with monetization in mind — it started as two agency owners sharing pricing and client-management practices, then grew into a community of 11,000+ WordPress professionals. He rejects the model where a leader stands on stage and members passively consume; instead he treats it as everyone contributing side by side, regardless of experience level. He also holds a strict line on quality: only 40-45% of membership requests get approved, because one bad member costs the group more than any growth number could offset. A strict no-self-promotion rule keeps the space usable — members build reputation through consistently helpful answers instead of pitching.

Notable Observation

Kyle's Website Owner's Manual sat mostly ignored as a free download — then sold a thousand copies in its first month once he put a price on it. Free, he found, quietly signals worthless; a price tag does the opposite work of implying value.

Why We Invited

I invited Kyle Van Deusen because he treats community health as a harder constraint than growth — turning away more than half of membership requests — and because his approach to monetization (products and sponsorships aligned with member values, not audience extraction) offers a real alternative to growth-at-all-costs thinking.

Featured Conversation

How to Build a Thriving Online Community
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Kyle Van Deusen is the founder of The Admin Bar, a Facebook community of more than 11,000 WordPress professionals that has become a go-to resource for web designers and developers. He built it without an initial business model, growing it from informal knowledge-sharing between two agency owners into thousands of members. He’s since developed sustainable revenue through digital products like the Website Owner’s Manual and values-aligned sponsorships, all while holding strict standards on who’s admitted to protect the community’s culture.

Founder, The Admin Bar