Who
Karen Mannheim
Co-founder, TRAZZO Lighting
A communications company
Your company outgrew its own story.
We build the next one.
What CRUDA is
We translate cultures into business.
CRUDA is a communications company.
Outward
Between a founder and a market that never heard of them.
Inward
Between a company and its own people.
Across
Between capital from one part of the world and the country it just landed in.
Marcus Aurelius ran the Roman Empire for nineteen years. He was at war for fourteen of them.
What survived isn’t the empire. It’s twelve notebooks he wrote in Greek — not philosophy, just a man working out what to do.
You have a version of that, and you’re too close to see it. Anyone who does something exceptional every day files it under normal.
So the job isn’t writing. It’s taking things off until what’s left is only yours.
What we do
Start with two conversations. Then twelve weeks, or every week after that.
Start hereSecond LookTwo conversations and a written diagnosis.01TranslatedTwelve weeks to build the system a company uses to say what it is.02TransmissionWe run the system every week, so it stops depending on the founder.03InterpretedFor companies whose owners, teams and buyers come from different cultures.
See how each one works →Selected work.
Karen Mannheim
Lights homes worth $10 million to $200 million; one of Forbes Perú's 50 most powerful women, 2026.
TRANSLATED · TRANSMISSION
Mike Kaeding
CEO of Norhart, $230M in assets created, on a mission to halve the cost of housing.
TRANSMISSION
Girish Sehgal
Former Four Seasons GM, bringing hospitality into the UAE's biggest medical city.
TRANSLATED
José Mannheim
Co-founder of AGP, maker of armored glass for the Pentagon, Tesla and Audi.
TRANSLATED
Confidential
Built a $300M on-demand fashion group, lost it, and built it again.
INTERPRETED
JP Romero
Takes Latin American architecture and design brands into the US market.
TRANSLATED · TRANSMISSION
INOUT
A frameless sliding door line, branded from zero, with a trade program the client still runs on its own.
TRANSLATED
Jack Yeager
Sold his first company for seven figures, sailed the world, and came back to build a lighting business in Miami.
TRANSLATED · TRANSMISSION
BAUHOME
Luxury kitchen cabinets, founded by the former Director of Operations at Santa Monica's biggest hospital.
TRANSLATEDWhat a client says
The work is excellent and nobody outside your circle finds out. I had it for twenty-eight years.
In early 2021 I decided to become visible and I hired Fran. Five years later, TRAZZO is not the same company.
Client since
2021 — 2026
Five years
What we built for her
Thirty-three years of work, in front of the people who specify it.
Karen lights homes worth $10 million to $200 million. Her buyers are developers, architects and high-end builders across the United States, Latin America and Spain — a few thousand people, not a market. The writing went to them.
605,050
LinkedIn impressions
365 days · 66% outside her network · LinkedIn Analytics, August 2026
96×
more people than follow her
on 6,299 followers · LinkedIn Analytics, August 2026
$60,192
a year
what buying that attention would have cost · LinkedIn $33,278 + Instagram $26,914 · CPMs at the floor of published 2026 benchmarks
What other people started saying
Forbes Perú put Karen on its 2026 list, without a pitch.
Our founder
You work with the founder — and with a team small enough to move.
Experience
Ten years across Fortune 500s, SMEs and B2B companies, on three continents, in-house and agency side.
Before CRUDA
Mondelez · AB InBev · Delivery Hero · Nestlé · TikTok
Fran Herrera · Founder · born in Salta, Argentina
Start here
Where is your company standing today?
We work with founders and companies in Miami, Minneapolis, Abu Dhabi, Panama City, Dubai, Los Angeles and Argentina.
Two conversations and a written diagnosis. $950.
Start a Second Look →fran@thecruda.com