Lee, I've had the 3 strikes routine in the past, but over the recent months I've judged each case on it's merits. If I see an advantage of keeping a PITA custy for a while because it fits into the plan for a time, then so be it.
Some people read this stuff and think "How can you have too many custies?" or "It's easy for others, they have enough work".
If people think like that, they'll still keep getting the same problems as Smithie and his sort. If you get a customer from leaflets or knocking, or any other way, then keep doing what you did to get that custy until you have so many that you can't cope. Then the choice is, get a worker to help, or cut the PITA's out of your custy base.
It's not clever, or world moving. Just keep hunting custies and the problems change from PITA custies to "can't keep up" problems. Which do we want??
Just remember this lads, only 1% of people have the bottle and ambition to actually work for themselves. That's us. If you're good enough to be in that 1%, why stop doing what you did to get here? Get too much work.
HTH