Not all clients are equal.
You need to pick out the good from the bad.
Here's a Christmas exercise for you.
Open up a spreadsheet, or grab a piece of paper.
Down the left hand side, list out all your existing clients.
Across the top, right out "profit", "referrals", "enjoyment", "repeat business" and then your immutable laws that we worked on yesterday.
Now you've got a grid - clients down one axis and criteria across the other.
Give each client a score out of 5 (1 being bad, 5 being good) for each criteria.
And at the right hand edge, give them a total.
Now sort your clients by that total.
At the top, with the highest scores, should be your best clients.
At the bottom, with the lowest scores, should be your worst clients.
Now, look at the top 25%. What do they have in common? Is the boss a particular type of person? Do they work in a particular industry? Was it a certain type of work?
Look at the bottom 25% and ask the same questions.
What are the patterns?
Now, come up with between 3 and 5 questions that you can ask yourself whenever you meet a potential client.
Do they meet criteria A? Are they a type B? Do they want service C?
If the majority of the answers are no, then you know, in advance, that this is probably a bad client for you, and you should pass. But if the answers are all yes, then this is probably a good client for you and you should go for it.