You've to make sure that you are using your iCloud email address on your phone (of course the same applies for your mac). Under pref you can chose that new notes are always created with this email address.
Then your notes will be synced over iCloud. Sometimes it just takes some time to sync because of Apple And you have to activate Notes for iCloud under 'pref' -> 'iCloud' on the phone too.
Turns out with iOS 7 the notes were going to my gmail address not icloud. I can't seem to turn that on over my Mac how can I transfer everything to icloud?
whatever email you have with your apple ID should be the one associated with iCloud, that is what matters, it doesn't have to be the email that ends in .icloud.