Strong craftsmanship. No clear structure.
In 2020, Krystina Jakob had an unusually strong professional basis. Years in agencies, working for international brands such as Lufthansa, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and Leibniz. She was able to deliver design at a level that many freelancers never achieve because they have never worked in such branded worlds.
What was missing was the structure to make it a viable business. There were projects, but no repeatable offer. Every project was renegotiated, repriced, rethought. No clear target group. As a designer with blue-chip experience, she could theoretically work for almost anyone. That was exactly the problem. The question “Who am I in this market and for whom exactly?” had no clear answer.
Cold outreach. A rare exception in the MSA portfolio.
The contact came about through a cold approach from Domenic. This is rather the exception in the MSA portfolio. Most mandates come through recommendations, personal networks or renewed collaboration after previous projects. With Krystina it was active identification and direct approach.
A strong professional basis was visible. What was still missing was also visible: the translation of this quality into a clear offer. This made the fit precise. The first conversation was open: no hard pitch, no ready-made purchase intention, but an honest exchange about what would be possible if the structure was built underneath.
The collaboration was purely a coaching retainer. No profit sharing. That suited the task: sparring, structural counterweight, thought partner. No operational embedding, no MSA sales team. Implementation, offers, pitches and deals remained entirely with Krystina. Coaching should empower them to do it themselves — not do it for them.
Five strands. Twelve months. A real change.
Five strands ran in parallel for more than twelve months. Longer than many MSA mandates. And exactly this length was appropriate because it wasn't just texts or packages that were changed, but the thinking behind the business.
01 · Positioning sparring
The central strand. Krystina's broad professional strength was at the same time her positioning weakness: someone who can do a lot is not automatically the obvious choice for someone in particular. The sparring did not follow a ready-made framework. It was a months-long process of checking, sharpening, discarding and coming back.
02 · Offer structure and packages
“I do design projects” became a structured offer: clear packages, defined results, repeatable prices. The difference between a designer who renegotiates every project and an expert who sells clear packages is not cosmetic. He decides whether every project starts from scratch.
03 · Sales talk and conclusion
Away from reactive query processing and towards active conversations. The coaching focused on concrete sales techniques: qualifications, needs analysis, clear boundaries, making decisions without pressure games. For creatives who have spent years learning to present work, this is a new discipline. And often the prerequisite for actually getting the prices that are mentioned.
04 · Pronounce prices clearly
How prices are named, explained and maintained without slipping into justification. Many creatives price their work too low because they rarely decide on prices themselves in agency structures. The work therefore went into two places: the right language for prices and the calmness of using this language even under objection.
05 · Price security and self-confidence
The most invisible and important strand. Without inner certainty that the prices are justified, every negotiation technique collapses at the first real objection. This wasn’t mindset coaching in the self-help sense. It was calibration: What is this work really worth, measured in terms of market, results, effort — and why?
Another business. Built on thinking, not tricks.
At the end of the twelve-month collaboration, Krystina had a structurally different business than at the beginning.
The collaboration ended amicably. The structural work was done. Krystina had developed the mindset to move on and further sharpen her position.
The niche she chose herself. The category that is associated with it today.
The real proof of the work only becomes apparent in retrospect. After the collaboration ended, Krystina made a strategic decision that would hardly have been possible without the preparatory work: radical specialization in pharmacies.
The publicly visible reality today is documented:
- apo.so.me (since October 2020) — Marketing and branding for pharmacies.
- apo.so.me content (since December 2021) — social media content production.
- health.recruiting (since April 2023) — recruiting campaigns for pharmacies.
- Digital pharmacy training — webinars and coaching formats.
- Expanded team with web, AI and search visibility specialists.
- Documented customer testimonials from pharmacies in Germany, including Elephant-Apotheke Hamburg.
- Active presence at industry events such as Expopharm and Apofluencer.
The clearest positioning case in the MSA portfolio.
This case is the clearest evidence in the MSA portfolio of a simple positioning truth: visibility doesn't just come from better work, more budget or more activity. It comes from a clear decision: Who are you the obvious choice?
When a pharmacy owner in Germany thinks about marketing, there is a short list of possible contacts. Krystina is on this list. This is the difference between “one of many” and “one of the few”.
The work wasn't about changing Krystina's abilities. These were strong from the start. The work was to build a framework within which these skills could become category-forming. Without positioning thinking, she would probably be an excellent but more replaceable freelancer today. With positioning thinking, it became a brand.
In this sense, positioning is not a marketing task. It is the basic decision as to which business becomes possible at all. Category doesn't come about by simply getting better. It comes from deciding which smaller, clearer category you want to win.
