Why outreach feels so hard even when you know what to do
It's not a motivation problem. Here's what's actually in the way.
Hi impact maker,
Does this feel familiar?
You open your laptop in the morning.
Emails first. Admin, at least the things you don’t want to procrastinate on.
Then client work.
And by the time you come up for air, it’s 4pm. You’re tired. The outreach, the LinkedIn post, the message you meant to send to that old contact — it didn’t happen. Again.
A while back I came across a framework from Joanna Galvao that reframes this perfectly.
She draws it as a pyramid. At the top sit marketing and sales. Not because they’re the priority. Because that’s where we put the things that only get whatever scraps of time and energy are left. Admin and client work fill everything below, expanding to take up most of the day.
The top gets the least. The bottom gets the most.
She says: invert it.
Put marketing and sales at the bottom of the pyramid, where the weight is. Start your morning there, when you have the most energy and the clearest head. Then move to client work. Then admin, in contained windows, not as a constant background hum.
It makes complete sense. And most people I talk to immediately see themselves in it.
But it misses something key.
Understanding the pyramid doesn’t mean you’ll implement it.
Because the problem isn’t just when in your day you do outreach. It’s that you were never taught how to do it in the first place.
When you worked in organisations, someone else handled business development. Sales and marketing were whole departments. You focused on your craft.
Now you’re the work and the pipeline. And nobody handed you a manual.
So you sit down to do outreach and hit a blank page.
What do I even say?
How do I reach out without sounding salesy?
Do I need to post more on LinkedIn, and about what?
How do I follow up with a lead that’s gone cold?
And because there’s no clear answer, client work wins. Every time.
There’s also something else.
When your calendar is full, outreach feels optional.
Why nurture relationships when you have plenty of work right now?
But that’s exactly when it matters most.
Because the feast-and-famine cycle doesn’t happen because you stopped caring.
It happens because you only reach out when you need to. And by then, as Ross Ó Lochlainn puts it, you’re giving off booty call energy.
Scarcity, not connection.
In IMMA, we address this at the structural level.
We start each week with a clear ritual, not a vague intention, so outreach actually happens. We share a relational outreach library: scripts, prompts, and resources you didn’t know you needed until they saved you hours.
And you’re not doing this alone.
Last week we had a conversation about reconnecting with university friends.
People who are now 10 to 15 years into their careers, in positions to open doors, with trust already built. It sounds obvious when you say it out loud.
But nobody had thought about it until we talked it through together.
That’s what collective intelligence does. It surfaces what you couldn’t have found on your own.
This month, we’re offering three Explore IMMA Collective sessions, live, at different times to cover different time zones.
If you’re tired of the feast-and-famine cycle and want to see how we build healthy pipelines together, join us for a session.
We’ll look at where you are, where you want to go, and how others inside IMMA are building businesses that stay full, even when life gets busy.
With you in this,
Lilli
Opportunities & Behind the scenes at IMMA Collective
Here are eight of the best opportunities in the impact space that we shared this week.
Want to get a sneak-peak around our referral & cross-pollination system that we launched at IMMA Collective? Because introductions are a powerful way to grow your business.