The authority behind The Inside Operators
Karen Thrall
Senior operator · Sales, Operations & Culture
Half your business is what you built. The other half is whether your assistant manager runs it at 4pm on a Saturday when everything's gone wrong at once. You install the first half. You earn the second. I've spent twenty years on the second.
Karen Thrall brings humor, heart, and hard-won wisdom to the universal challenge of keeping your cool under pressure.
Culture is the half that keeps your standard running when you're not there.
She co-wrote the book on it. Don't Lose Your Sh*t at Work, with Dr. Joseph Shrand of Harvard Medical School.
Praise for the book
Packed with practical tips, Thrall helps you decide when to deal with what makes you angry, now or later, but not never.
If you have ever damaged relationships with anger and regretted it, this book is for you.
The bench
Two principals, named. More operators being added.
IO wasn't built by people who studied operators from the outside. It was built by people who ran the four walls themselves. Employee. Owner. Franchisee. Franchisor. Investor. That's who is being hired onto it next.
Karen Thrall
Senior operator, across sales, operations and culture. Twenty years installing the behaviour half of a standard, inside enterprise chains and on the floor. Co-author, with Dr. Joseph Shrand of Harvard Medical School.
Corey Singleton
Eight-time entrepreneur, four exits, venture capital, and operator of a venture studio built to run on agents. Entrepreneurial and investor experience, on his own businesses.
The next seat
Open. IO is hiring operators onto the bench now, and every seat is filled by someone who carried the risk themselves.
Our operators have built and run systems inside these organisations — enterprise work, by the people on the bench, not retail installs by the firm.
Before you talk to anyone
Take the audit first. Eighteen marks, five minutes, and you will know which part of your standard still lives in a person before we ever speak.
Take the Operating AuditBring Karen into the room for a keynote, a workshop, or coaching.
Let’s Talk.
Every chain has locations that run on one person. Name yours, and we will scope The IO Install against them.