Meet Jon Gomes

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jon Gomes.

Jon, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I started off in the sales realm, selling anything under the sun. Everything from food, books, Cutco knives, fitness memberships. You name it. Now, I’m an independent contractor serving companies from all over the U.S. and some internationally. What has always drawn me to sales and marketing, since about the age of 12 has been the frameworks and intertwining systems of daily life. I was always an odd duck, reading Chet Holmes, Peter Thiel and other top sales and marketing gurus. Frameworks and sales systems, combined with an insatiable desire to learn about others and human psychology, created a natural path into the sales & marketing realm.

I started off as most do in the sales realm, in the offline realm, making cold calls and with my feet on the pavement. Over time this evolved into the online world, with a pet project of growing a Facebook page to over 35,000 just to test out some online strategies.

Over the next few years, I started learning skills such as A/B testing, click-through rates and more. For someone who likes sales this should be great, right? Boring. At the time I was deep in the world of CRM systems and email campaign-data which still lights up my engines now but I was at a 9-5 (i.e. taking direction from multiple bosses).

As much as I love to reverse-engineer frameworks and systems, I do not like being stuck in them. I wanted to learn faster, test on my own terms and generally did not want someone standing over me telling me what the next moves were.

It was time for a change. I left Boston and moved West to the Rocky Mountains. Now it was time to start taking my sales experience and redeveloping the product offering, me. Now, as most other businesses do, I could also dedicate time to R&D. At this point, not only could I spend time designing ads for CTR, engagement metrics and everything in-between but I could also spend time creating custom banner ad animations, custom websites and more.

Fast forward a few years to the present, I have a base of clients that keep me busy and I’ve been fortunate enough to work behind the scenes for companies on the Fortune 500 list. If you had told me that I would be doing while I still lived in Boston, I would definitely not have believed you.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
One of the biggest challenges, and ironically one of the things I disliked the most from working a 9-5 in a cubicle environment, has been figuring out the roadmap of what comes next. As an independent contractor, solopreneur, whatever you’d like to call it…the benefit of not having a boss is great but that means you have to tell yourself what to do and sometimes that’s not always the clearest.

I’ve found that there are great resources (books, podcasts, lectures, etc.) of entrepreneurs and agencies that lay out systems of what the next logical business stage is but business is different. One of my favorite books, at this point in time, on this matter is called “Rework.” It dives into how great businesses can recreate their ideal products and leverage their assets to deliver the best service or product possible.

Because I have no direct boss that is driving my business growth and strategy over time, I’ve taken to dedicating what I call “R&D” time phases as any large corporation might. This may take the shape of a course, bouncing ideas off a friend or reading endless articles and thoughts from others.

Please tell us about your business.
Without getting too technical, I help connect those searching for a product or service with the businesses and individuals that offer what others may need. This typically starts with some fashion of pay-per-click advertising as the vessel, whereas the creative may be an animated banner advertisement or assistance in landing page creations.

I like to make data-driven decisions whenever it comes to marketing and sales ideas, this means following the numbers in Google Analytics and Google Ads. For those of you out there that don’t know what this means, this is essentially reading between the lines on where and how online visitors interact with the website of the company.

Let’s say you own a bakery and promote the business via Instagram. You want to know if your pastry posts are indeed directing sales from the website. I would say here, “great, this is absolutely doable!” The process would be: let’s set up a custom link inside Instagram and connect it with Google Analytics. From here we can see exactly which post is driving traffic to the site BUT take it a step further and see which pages they viewed and interacted with in-between the initial site visits to the sale. The more business questions you can answer before your visitor actually asks them, the better off everyone is and your ROI can continue growing over time.

Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
First and foremost I’d like to thank my parents for all their love and support over the ages. I truly would not be here today if it were not for their knowledge and dedication to my inquisitive nature. Truly, I would not be here today if not for them since they adopted me from El Salvador by them at the age of 1 and brought to Boston.

In regards to mentors and business development, there’s a Jim Rohn saying that goes along the lines of “you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with.” I’d like to think that my development has been fueled by these “online mentors” and thought leaders throughout my time on this planet thus far. I truly believe that continued learning and development in all areas of life only help to put the puzzle pieces together faster in your mind.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.JonMGomes.com
• Email: Hello@JonMGomes.com

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