I recently sent a database to a client whose new Drupal website I'm building.
I'd populated it with some default users, nodes and menu links that they'd be able to review after they import the database into their hosting.
That worked well, but I've also recently been using the Default Content module which exports entities into YAML and saves them as code alongside the configuration.
Now I can install the website from scratch using the exported configuration to re-add the content types, block types, etc, and by enabling a custom module, all the default content will also be recreated.
I can tear the site down now and rebuild it as often as I like and avoid contaminating my environment with any rogue configuration or content changes.
Everything is reproducible.
I also wouldn't have needed to send the database to the client. They could have installed Drupal and followed the same steps I would do locally and got exactly the same result.
I like this approach and can see me using it more on future projects.