If you’ve known me for any length of time, you’ll know that the two main levers I talk about when it comes to getting clients are content and outreach.

I’ve written about and taught both extensively, and over the last few years I’ve run in-depth programs on each of these topics.

But something I realised recently is that I haven’t really spoken about the interplay between them.

And when I look at the advice out there more broadly, it often feels like it’s split into one camp or the other. On one side, content is everything. The advice is to show up consistently, build an audience, and clients will come. On the other, I hear that content is largely a waste of time and that what really matters is networking, outreach and conversations.

And I myself have been exposed to both sides of this.

Over a decade ago when I worked with my first business coach, he actively told me to stop writing content altogether and focus purely on outreach. And to be fair, to a large extent, it worked. I got clients.

But what I also noticed was that everything depended on me being actively in conversation all the time. The moment I stopped, things would slow down.

A few years later I started following a coach who talked a lot about the importance of creating content and I made a commitment to creating content consistently. It wasn’t until I started creating content consistently alongside regular outreach that my business really began to grow in a more stable way.

Because here’s what I’ve realised: both are required to have a consistent flow of new people coming into your world.

And that’s because content does something that outreach alone can’t.

It makes you more visible and allows people outside of your existing network to find you, to spend time with your thinking, to understand your perspective before they ever speak to you. It helps you to demonstrate expertise and builds familiarity and trust at a distance. Articles I wrote as long as 7 years ago are still sending traffic to my website and converting into clients.

And by the same token, outreach does something that content alone can’t.

It turns that awareness into relationship. It creates trust and space for real conversation and for someone to feel seen and supported in a way that simply isn’t possible through content alone.

When I look at my own client base, and the data I’ve tracked over the years, most people don’t come to me directly from a post or a piece of content.

They come through a person.

A colleague who recommends me. A former client who shares my work. Someone who mentions me in a space I’m not even in.

But when those people land in my world, they will typically head to my blog and/or subscribe to my newsletter and then it’s my content that does the heavy lifting. It helps them understand how I think, how I work, and whether what I offer is right for them.

Something that happens often is that I’ll get on a working together call with someone who has completed the application form on my 1:1 coaching page and they say that they heard about me from someone in my network. When we talk, they’ll say something like so-and-so told me about you and then I found your blog and binge read all of your articles or I joined your newsletter and have read every single one of your letters since. It’s not uncommon for people to tell me that they had already decided they wanted to work with me before even speaking to me. 

So you can see, it’s never been one or the other. It’s always been both.

And more than that, it’s how those two things feed each other.

Content gives you something to be known for and something to share your message. It creates touchpoints and entry points into your world. It’s a place to share your approach and point of view. For me it has also become a resource, a body of work. In effect, my intellectual property.

Outreach keeps you close to real people. It shapes what you say, who you say it to, and opens the door to the conversations where clients, collaborations and opportunities are actually created. Not sure what type of conversations you should be having, you can read about the 4 types of conversation I recommend here. 

Don’t know who to reach out to? Look at who’s paying attention to your content. Don’t know what to create content on? Look at what people are saying in your conversations.

When one of those drops away, you’re missing something important.

When both are present, but inconsistent, it can feel like you’re doing a lot and not getting very far.

And when both are working together, in a way you can actually sustain, that’s when things start to feel very different.

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently, particularly in the context of what creates steadier, more predictable client flow over time. Not more effort, not more noise, but a way of connecting with people that has them trusting you enough to buy from you.

I’m curious which side you’ve found yourself leaning towards.

Have you been focusing more on content or more on connection? And what have you noticed as a result? Let me know in the comments.