How did you guys aquire clients when you first started?

Recently (about a month and a half ago) I started my own Revenue Operations Firm, essentially we manage businesses workflows and see if theres a system we can develop for them (we have devs as well) that either saves them time or incresead revenue, there's more that goes into it but that isnt the point of this post. Basically the way I see it there are 4 ways to get a client or customer, outreachs, ads, word to mouth, and content. I'm still figuring out what works and what doesnt with the business but I have tried cold calling and had a team to do it and was not really affective as the leads either never showed up or, were not qualified at all or calls went straight to voicemail, and before you say I did not do enough I had people calling 200 businesses a day for 2 weeks and got 3 businesses who actually showed up to the businesses, it just wasnt viable. I moved on to running ads now and am in the proccess of learning all that. I also Cold dm about 100 businesses a day that fit what we are looking for. What I'm curious about is what did it take to get your first clients and what am I doing wrong right now? Should I go back to cold calling and just refine what I do? Curious on what it was like when you guys started your businesses.