[lumpa]

This sounds like a risky approach. There are many ways this could backfire, from burning out the buffer person to creating a culture of prioritizing bad clients. Not saying it's impossible to routinely handle abusive customers and make a consistent profit, just that's a risky proposition that takes special (not necessarily in a positive way) talent to pull off.

[runawaybottle]

All good points, the only thing I’ll say about the notion of ‘good clients’ is that, usually, you have to work your way up to good clients. This is true even if you are just an ordinary person looking for a job, you will need a framework to handle low paying or minimal growth roles.

When you only have a handful of clients, even the shittiest one matters. Setting standards for what you will or won’t put up with this early may not be optimal. Getting the framework in place internally for your team to identify the problem clients, keeping the toxicity transparent and distributed through proper heatsinks will lead to the more organic evolution of what you will or will not put up with from a client when money is involved.

So part of the framework could actually mean de-prioritizing the client’s work internally, while prioritizing communication and expectations for some time. You could also boost morale of your team by requiring sign off from leadership on every little deliverable to show that you acknowledge the problem and those managing it internally.