Last month, I met an entrepreneur for coffee in London.

We both have personal brands but have taken different approaches to monetization.

She runs a cohort and had just hit her first 6 figure month. But as she told me her workload post-launch, I began to shudder. I know entrepreneurship requires elbow grease, but her week sounded like my definition of hell.

I told her this.

And she replied with:

“Ah Kieran but you’re lucky. When you sell your products, you don’t need to do any extra work.”

I laughed and agreed, and the conversation moved on.

But later, as I stood squished in another man's armpit enjoying the London Underground during Friday rush hour, I thought about what she said.

You’re lucky.

Maybe.

I’m certainly lucky to be here, and I remind myself daily what a pleasure it is to write to you.

But the truth is, as an entrepreneur, you decide what business you build. I understand why my friends run cohorts—they’re massively profitable and have excellent in-built flywheel mechanisms.

But there are three reasons I picked the digital product path.

Let me run you through them.

1) No marginal cost of replication

I learned this from Naval Ravikant the day I discovered Internet businesses. You want something that costs the same to produce regardless of if you sell 10 or 10,000.

“But cohorts also have no cost of marginal replication, Kieran”, you might argue.

And you’d be right, my interruptive friend—if money is your metric.

For me, it’s time.

I spent three years chasing paychecks as a dentist, working as hard as I could to get rich sometime in the future. Life passed in a blur. As did my hairline.

I became an entrepreneur after understanding the truth:

We act like time is infinite and money is not. But the opposite is true. Time is the true measure of wealth and the richest person in the world is the one who invests wisely.

This leads me to our second point:

2) More freedom and autonomy

How do you want to spend your time?

I’ve run a cohort before. I made good money, and I hated it. My clients were great and I enjoyed teaching them, but my diary was so busy with calls that I could feel energy leaking out of me from every orifice.

You gotta play long-term games you can win.

So I decided to build my day around what looks like work to others but feels like play to me:

• Writing
• Reading
• Walking
• Thinking

I now have 1-2 client calls per month. Digital products give you the freedom to work like this.

Let's wrap up with the third reason products are powerful.

3) Make an impact at scale

There’s something exciting about knowing your ideas can help thousands of people.

And that those people may go on to help thousands more.

It sounds cheesy, but this ripple effect of impact gets me going in the morning (that, and copious amounts of Yorkshire Tea).

It’s why I write and teach people how to write. And digital products give you the best shot at reaching the most people.

I don’t want to limit my audience to a course that runs four times a year and costs four figures. I want them to learn when they want, how they want, for a reasonable price.

Now, you might think otherwise. That’s cool—the best part about business is the freedom to build whatever the hell you like.

But make sure you know what you're optimising for.

It's all too easy to build for freedom and find yourself in a prison instead.

Hope this helps,

Kieran