Who is Zé Paulo Gomes, Designer and Brand Consultant?

Hey there, business owner! I am Zé Paulo Gomes, but you can call me Zé. I am a designer, writer, instructor, speaker and brand consultant accredited by SEBRAE Alagoas, Sergipe, Pará and Tocantins. SEBRAE is the Brazilian agency that supports micro and small businesses. I am also hired as a strategic partner to lead large scale projects.

Design starts with thinking

When I say I am a designer, a lot of people picture someone drawing logos on a computer. That is only the part you can see. I use the word in its broadest sense: from the Latin designare, the one who plans with intention. Design is the act of giving form to an object, a process, a product, a message, a brand. Everything that needs a form passes through the hands of a designer.

Design starts with thinking, and the action only gives shape to what was planned before. A well calculated price is design. So is customer service that does not leave people waiting, and a positioning that makes someone choose you without asking for a discount. The logo comes later, to dress all of that. As I wrote in Marcas da Empatia, whoever starts with the logo usually ends up with a pretty shell sitting on top of a business with no foundation.

The books call this design thinking: understand people, define the problem well, generate ideas, test fast and cheap, and only then execute. I prefer to explain it the way any business owner gets it: think before you act, always with an eye on who is going to buy.

That is what I call Strategic Design. I shape what sits behind the processes, the price, the culture and the market positioning of your business.

Anyone who sees me today in a SEBRAE classroom or at the meeting table of a big project might not imagine where I started. So let me tell you, because everything I teach comes from this story.

I started at a print shop

My first job in the field was at Gráfica e Editora Paranaíba, a print shop, in 2009, as a prepress artist. I got files ready for printing: film, plate making, color adjusted for offset. Business cards, flyers, folders, shopping bags and fleet decals came out of my hands.

It was the very end of the creative process. Whatever arrived finished had to come out of the machine right, and any mistake turned into paper in the trash and a loss for the client. That is where I learned that a beautiful design that does not work in practice costs money.

It was also at the print shop that I saw a guru for the first time. A man with an air of superiority, speaking slowly, and a successful business owner consulting him even to decide the color, the price and the finish of a printed piece. That scene stayed with me so much that it became the opening of Encontre um MEIo. The market filled up with people like that: "People who never got grease on their hands trying to teach a mechanic how to fix an engine."

Intrapreneurship: growing inside someone else's business

In 2011 I moved to Brasília to work in advertising. I came in as a junior art assistant, still finishing files. Over the next five years I worked at agencies focused on events, retail, digital, live marketing and food. At each one I climbed a step: junior art director, mid level, senior and then creative coordinator.

There is a name for this: intrapreneurship, which means being an entrepreneur inside someone else's business. You take ownership of the project, propose things before anyone asks and answer for more than your badge says. That is how I went from finishing files to leading a creative team.

From other people's agencies to my own

In 2016 I founded my first agency, GarniZé Propaganda. It grew and, in 2017, became TOVAP, now called TOVAP Marcas e Publicidade, based in Marechal Deodoro, Alagoas. Through TOVAP I have created brands for clients in Brazil, the United States and the United Kingdom.

I will not lie to you: in the beginning, I got it badly wrong. I told this story in Encontre um MEIo:

"There are two kinds of micro businesses that close their doors: the ones that do not sell and the ones that do not profit from what they sell. I have been both. I used aggressive pricing to dominate the market. I served a construction company for a third of what I should have charged and advertised a shopping mall on television without getting the agency commission from the station. I had the storefront, but I felt I was working too much and still had no money. I dominated for a while, lost all my clients and learned a hard lesson: cost does not forgive dreams."

That is why pricing shows up in everything I teach, from the book to the workshop.

Managing marketing for large accounts

Even with my own agency, I kept acting as an intrapreneur. For five years I was the outsourced marketing manager of Palmas Shopping, a mall in Tocantins, in charge of campaigns from start to finish: slogan, key visual, printed and digital pieces and in-mall media.

Later, I led the repositioning of Niceplanet Assessoria em Conformidade, a multinational agribusiness company. The work went from market research to the new visual identity, including the tone of voice and all of the brand's communication. In both cases I came in as an outside partner and took care of the brand as if it were mine.

Small business kept my feet on the ground

Meanwhile, I was living on the other side of the counter. I have been a MEI, Brazil's individual micro entrepreneur, and I have run a business with no team: selling, delivering, collecting, posting and still finding time to think about the brand. I have sat in a multinational's boardroom. And I know the routine of someone who opens the door at six in the morning with bills to pay. That mix of big agency and small business is what shapes the way I think about marketing.

Over all these years, I watched a lot of companies close and open. I saw business owners with good products struggling because they lacked the basics, and companies burning money on advertising to sell bad products. I met plenty of competent people, with the potential to achieve what they dreamed of, getting stuck without knowing why.

It was never fear. It was always a lack of direction.

That is why today, as an instructor, speaker and accredited consultant at SEBRAE Alagoas, Sergipe, Pará and Tocantins, I work to open up access to hands on learning for micro and small businesses, with methods that fit the time, the budget and the reality of people who do everything on their own. The DIGIT@MEI workshop was born at SEBRAE Alagoas and now reaches all four states.

Through SEBRAE Pará, I worked on territory projects such as Rota Carajás and the Serra Pelada tourist destination brand. To create Rota Carajás, I went to Parauapebas myself and walked the route.

The books went back to the print shop

Everything I learned along the way became two books, Marcas da Empatia and Encontre um MEIo, both written in Portuguese. In them, the examples start from the ground, with brands I helped create and position and with people who pay the bills, get it wrong, correct it and carry on.

The first copies were printed at Paranaíba, the same print shop that gave me my first chance. The prepress artist who used to prepare other people's files went back there to print his own book.

Alongside the books, I share on the site, for free, the pricing and brand positioning tools I use in my consulting work.

The education came after the practice

I finished my degree in Marketing in 2022, with more than a decade in the market behind me. Then came the MBA in Branding and, now, a postgraduate program in Tourism Marketing, which ties in with the destination projects I develop in Pará.

I did all of it in the early hours, going to bed late and waking up early, balancing the drive to grow with the need to pay the bills and simply exist. I am not the least bit ashamed of graduating from a small online university. I never walked into a classroom chasing a diploma; I was after knowledge.

I lived, and still live, the struggle of running a business on my own. The difference is that today my relationship with the market is stronger and my brand keeps getting more established. And studying after the practice has an advantage: every new concept arrives with a client already in mind.

How I work today

In practice, I operate on two fronts: through SEBRAE, with micro and small businesses, and as a strategic partner, on large scale projects.

A lot of people ask me how to hire me without paying the full price of a consultancy. The answer is SEBRAE. The agency does not keep brand consultants on its payroll: it accredits outside professionals and hires them on demand, when a company needs a specific service. In several programs, the business owner pays only part of the fee, and the rest is subsidized.

I am accredited in four states, each with its own path:

SEBRAE Alagoas: Sebraetec (TEC), for subsidized brand and design projects, and SGF, for consulting, workshops and talks within the unit's programs.

SEBRAE Sergipe: Sebrae Consult, one-on-one consulting with a subsidized package of hours.

SEBRAE Pará: SGF and Sebraetec, for one-on-one consulting, collective territory projects and visual identity.

SEBRAE Tocantins: SGF and Sebraetec, in the same format as Pará.

Through these programs, I deliver visual identity, brand positioning, video production for social media, branding, marketing and innovation consulting, talks and digital marketing workshops. To request it, go to the unit nearest you, say what your business needs and mention my name, Zé Paulo Gomes. If you prefer, message me on WhatsApp first: I will explain which program fits your case. The full step by step, state by state, is in the article How to hire me through SEBRAE in Alagoas, Sergipe, Pará and Tocantins.

Outside those four states, or for anyone who wants to hire me directly, I work through TOVAP Marcas e Publicidade, in person in Alagoas and remotely anywhere in Brazil. Through the agency, the same services are open to any business, plus trademark registration at INPI, Brazil's trademark office, website design and the Complete Brand in 30 days package.

On large scale projects, I come in as a strategic partner and lead the work with a team I put together or by directing the client's own team.

As I wrote at the opening of Encontre um MEIo: I am not your guru. My role is to be right there with you, with a method, from the plan to the execution.

A good brand is one that solves real problems with truth and essence.