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Rob Smith
Associate
Because business doesn't have to be hard
For established SMEs that have outgrown the way they work.
I find the friction that's quietly costing you time, money and momentum — and help you fix it.
Why I do this
Most SMEs I meet aren't badly run. They're busy, they're growing, and they're working far harder than they should have to.
You've grown. The way you work hasn't caught up. That's not a failure — it's what success does if you don't stay ahead of it.
So friction creeps in and becomes normal. People wait for permission. Managers escalate instead of solving. Customers feel the internal failures before anyone inside does. Salespeople stay busy but don't convert enough. Margin disappears quietly. Capacity sits unused. And too much still lands back on your desk.
None of it looks like a crisis. That's exactly why it survives. Friction becomes normal, and normal becomes invisible — and you cannot fix what you've stopped seeing.
My job is to make it visible again, and then help you clear it.
My Purpose
To find the friction limiting your performance, focus the team on what matters and fix it.
Ricky Muddimer - Founder of Clear the Friction
Meet Ricky
Hi, I'm Ricky.
I help established SME owners remove the operational, sales, and leadership friction that keeps them trapped in the day-to-day.
Over thirty years, I’ve held direct line accountability as Sales Director, Operations Director, and Managing Director—carrying real responsibility for numbers, margins, and people, not advising from the sidelines.
My track record is built on three core pillars:
- Sales Leadership & Turnarounds: Rebuilt underperforming sales units from the bottom 3% (ranked 254th out of 260) to the top 30 nationally within nine months by fixing sales processes and setting non-negotiable performance standards. Built sales teams from scratch that hit target performance within 10 months from a standing start.
- Operational Scale: Directed a 100-seat customer contact centre with 10 managers handling 300,000 calls annually—driving a 300% increase in cross-sales income while overseeing £1bn in new lending and £2.5bn in retained portfolio value.
- Transformational Change: Led multi-brand operational integrations and hard M-Day point-of-sale regulatory compliance programs across major financial mergers without missing a single external deadline.
Later, as Managing Director of a consultancy, my team delivered record operational revenues. But because cash was funneled into unproven pet projects without commercial models, the business ran out of capital, forcing an insolvency.
That experience proved an absolute commercial truth: the wrong things, done brilliantly, will still sink a business.
Effort is rarely the issue in an SME—effort directed at low-return, unvalidated work is.
That collapse, led me and three colleagues to launch a new consulting business that was profitable from day one, growing through austerity, a global pandemic, and international market disruption.
I’ve sat in your chair, carried the P&L, made the hard calls under pressure, and lived with the consequences.
I don't trade in jargon—I help you clear the drag so your business can run without relying on you for every decision.
"The wrong things, done brilliantly, will still sink a business."
The Team
I have been privileged to work with some amazing people over the years and access to knowledge, skills and even a different perective is crucuial to building businesses and teams. I recognise that I may not always be the right fit or have the right experience for you, but I guarantee I know someone who will.
This is why I have carefully chosen a team of credible operators to support me. They have all worked with and for some of the world’s leading brands
Why established SMEs?
Smaller businesses rarely get access to experienced, hands-on operational leaders who'll tell them the truth.
Owners are left to work it out alone, doing their best without the support larger organisations take for granted. So the friction — and the pet projects — go unquestioned until the problem is deep and already costing real money.
That's what Clear the Friction exists to change.
What I actually do
I look for the friction in the four places it hides.
Right People — the right people, in the right seats, with clear ownership and the backing to do the work that's genuinely theirs.
Right Things — everyone can see the line between what they do and what the business earns. Business, not busyness.
Right Way — work flows. Things get done once, done well, without depending on heroics or the right person being in.
Right Time — a rhythm the business can actually hold. Decisions made before they become urgent. Feedback that doesn't wait for the annual review.
Get those four working together and the commercial performance follows: healthier margin, better conversion, capacity that earns, and a business that no longer depends on you being in the room.
It's a three-step process.
Find the friction. An honest diagnosis of where the drag actually is — not where you assume it is.
Focus the team. Agree on the few things that will make the biggest difference and what to stop.
Fix what matters. Make the changes that move the numbers, and build the rhythm that keeps the friction gone.
I'm hands-on, working with you rather than talking at you. No jargon. No 90-slide deck. And we check it where it counts — margin, conversion, utilisation, the weight that comes off your desk — not in how motivated everyone feels afterwards.
Not perfect. Better.
Start where I'd start
You can't fix what you can't see.
The Friction Diagnostic takes five minutes. Twenty-four questions about what actually happens in your business — not how you'd rate yourself. You'll get a clear picture of where the drag is, and what to do about it first.
.png?width=800&height=450&name=Friction%20Diagnostic%20Results%20(1).png "Friction Diagnostic Results (1)")
Or if you'd rather just talk it through, book twenty minutes. No obligation. Worst case, you leave with a useful idea or two.
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We work with SME owners and leadership teams to identify and remove the friction that limits performance.
With over 35 years of experience working in corporate and small businesses, my background is in helping businesses improve results by getting clearer on goals, accountability, processes, commercial focus, and the behaviours needed to make change stick.
At our best when helping leaders cut through the noise, challenge assumptions, and turn messy business problems into clear, practical action.
This is not about motivational slogans or generic advice. It is about helping good businesses perform better.