Today we’d like to introduce you to Gino Gomez.
Gino, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
“You have cancer”, the three words you think you’d never hear.
That one moment, those three words were about to change my life, forever. My entire body filled up with this intense heat I had never felt before. I couldn’t even bring myself to cry. It just wasn’t real to me. I couldn’t comprehend how it was possible. I started off my week, like any other week. I was feeling fine all I had was a small cough and was convinced the doctor would just prescribe me an antibiotic of some sort. I was leaving for Dallas later that week to play a show and wanted to feel better for it.
My plans changed real quick when my family and I learned that I had stage 4 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Within a matter of days, I found myself moving from Miami to New York. I was on my way to seek treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering, an institution I knew nothing about but apparently knew everything about me.
From what was supposed to be a couple of months in NY turned out to be a couple of years. Throughout that time, I had to undergo eight rounds of chemo, four rounds of immunotherapy, 23 days of radiation, and multiple surgeries.
The best way for me to pass time and distract myself was by exploring New York’s endless restaurants and diners. I really enjoyed the researching aspect of my restaurant’s discoveries. However, I quickly became frustrated with the traditional platforms available for restaurant reviews and recommendations, such as Yelp, Tripadvisor, online blog posts, etc. It was then that I realized all my best recommendations were coming from my social network, not from complete strangers online.
It was from this general concept that the inception of the HoneySpot app came to be – a hybrid child between Instagram and Yelp. I was fascinated with the idea and knew that I found a place for it in the marketplace.
Fast forward, three years later and I am now officially cancer-free and the CEO of a start-up mobile application, aka HoneySpot. My team and I have managed to generate over 5,000 active users along with international recognition. HoneySpot is a space used to record and share your favorite dishes from your favorite restaurants across the world. From your secret spot down the street to that far away place you once dined at, you’re free to HoneySpot it all! We work with Google to make sure all locations are listed with accurate addresses and contact information, providing you with an effortless experience from the moment you choose a spot to the moment you plug it into your GPS. Like Instagram, the more people you follow and the more followers you have, the more exposed you are to unknown places and the more exposed your recommendations become. The idea is to make all recommendations easily shared, attainable and reliable. We hope to encourage our users to travel the world through and with HoneySpot always in mind.
Now, in addition to HoneySpot, my brother and I are back to doing what we’ve always wanted to do: producing music and DJing we’re both inspired by while sharing the experience of performing together on stage. I am extremely grateful to be alive and able to tell my story and I can say battling cancer isn’t easy but it is possible. I am a living testament of this to my family, friends and most importantly to myself. My life today, as I know which once felt so impossibly out of reach is now my beautiful and sweet reality. I owe this to the amazing doctors and nurses at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. I am deeply appreciative and humbled by the miracles that this team of medical professionals performed day in and day out for me and so many others. Thanks to them, I am so lucky to have been able to beat my disease and achieve remission.
Has it been a smooth road?
To be quite honest, cancer aside, I am seriously so lucky to have the life I live. Maybe I’ve excelled in my career the way I have because of cancer, perhaps it was going to happen anyway. All I know is that I couldn’t be happier with my reality right now and appreciate every second of it. Spending time reflecting on the struggle just feels like I’m taking time away from celebrating my success. Overcoming all my mental, physical and emotional insecurities have kept me on track to what I think is a successful life. My best advice is to take things as they come, after all, life could be pretty gentle so make sure not to force any of it. Living in the present moment has been my way to best live throughout it all, the struggles and successes.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
You could say I am known for HoneySpot by day and for my music by night, but the reality is that both of my professions were born out of my love of bringing people together, whether it’s on the dance floor or at a dinner table (sometimes both). My mantra is to do what I love while helping others. Communicating ideas, sharing my newfound knowledge of all things tech, and networking with people who challenge me can basically sum up my personal brand. I am lucky enough to use and further develop these skills through my role as the CEO of HoneySpot. Taking on the responsibility of managing employees and partners, while strategizing and implementing goals for my company has taught me so much. Seeing my vision through has propelled me with this energy that fuels my soul and gives me the reassurance I need to steer my company in the right direction. I am looking forward to its growth and property, while my brother and I continue to scheme on our next music project Sketchez. We are really excited about this one because of the management team behind it, so stay tuned! Here, you could catch us playing together and separately while covering new and familiar cities, genres and people.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
I really have two moments that are impossible to choose between. First is performing as a DJ at Ushuaïa in Ibiza, Spain which is one of the biggest stages in the world. I had grown up watching all my favorite DJs perform on that stage so being on the other side of it was a dream come true. Secondly, without a doubt would be the day we launched HoneySpot on the app store. My co-founder Adam and I had almost worked two years from the inception of the idea to launch. It’s hard to describe the feeling of taking an idea as big as developing an app and making it a reality after years of work, but it is the most rewarding and self satisfactory feeling I will never forget. I know my career path is far from traditional but, these particular moments feel closest to me because they are goals I had a long time coming.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.honeyspotapp.com
- Email: gino@honeyspotapp.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/honeyspotapp/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/honeyspotapp
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