The Low-Stakes Client
The easy, low-stakes clients you keep around are the ones least able to give you the proof you need to win bigger work.
The mechanism
A four-box square places clients by how easy they are to run and how much their business rides on your work. The comfortable low-stakes accounts cluster in the top-left corner, easy but nice to have, where a note says three hours a month and not one number worth publishing. The clients that make real case studies sit in the lower-right, harder to run but business-critical, and an arrow points from the easy corner toward them. Proof only exists where something was actually at stake, so an account with nothing riding on it can never become a story you can sell with.
Part of Publishing. Credibility and demand before the sales conversation.