Management
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Bill Erickson, co-founder of Next Wave, LLC, wasn’t always an internet guru. For 33 years he worked as a wholesale lumber broker for Robert’s & Dybdahl. While working there, Bill acquired a great achievement; he was the first employed wholesale lumber broker in the entire United States to have a “Million Dollar Month” in May 1983. Bill was so excited by this achievement he repeated it the following month, June 1983, increasing his own record to 2.4 Million Dollars. The company employed about 40 lumber brokers; Bill being the company’s top salesmen for 14 years. Amazingly, many of those years, he actually doubled the sales the second highest grossing broker in the company. Sadly for Bill when the company put on sales contests, he was always excluded. Bill was Senior Vice-President for many years, but in 1995 Bill left the company to start his own wholesale lumber business. Sometime in 2003 Bill made the decision to start a new career; this is when he was introduced to the potential of the “online” world. |
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Bill started his internet career working for DPMG Inc., which was an SEO company out of Vancouver and Winnipeg, Canada. DPMG had recently been caught up in the dot com crash, fired all their sales people and was left with account receivables clients who would not pay. Bill joined the company as a subcontractor with the task of collecting past due accounts and building back up the business selling cost per click advertising. It didn’t take long for DPMG to realize subcontracting sales to Bill was such a success that he actually out produced all of the fired sales people combined. Bill found ways to connect with CEO’s of major companies such as Expedia.com, Wells Fargo Bank in their re-finance and mortgage departments and several other large corporations. Bill had taken the business of DPMG at the time of $50,000/month to over $300,000/month in no time. Once the company was back on its feet financially, Bill’s job was done. |
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William (Bill)
E. Erickson,
President & Co-CEO |
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The funny part of the experience, and the reason his work for DPMG came to the end were written in a memo to him.
Bill had brought the following fears to the CEO of the company:
1. It stated that Bill brought in too much upfront money.
2. Bill was signing too many new clients.
3. Bill had a hard time not selling DPMG’s services when they would declare they temporarily needed no more orders.
The experience Bill learned from those 3 years vaulted like a volcano. This turn of events gave Bill even more drive and eagerness to succeed in the internet business. Bill began taking on a more personal interest in the internet, and began developing his own websites.
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During this time, Bill’s oldest son, Dustin, left college and began taking an interest in the world of internet marketing. Dustin worked side by side with Bill and a few other employees of DPMG, absorbing all the information and tricks of the trade that led to successful online marketing and SEO.
A new partnership was then formed between Bill, Dustin, and Bob Massa, founder and owner of SearchKing.com. Bill started brokering Bob’s SEO services and continued to do so for 2 years. Bill had reached a point where he and his son, Dustin, decided it was time to begin forming plans of their own to branch off and start their own SEO and internet business: Next Wave, LLC was born. |
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Dustin Erickson, Executive VP / Co-CEO of Next Wave, LLC has always had a niche for computers. At the age of five, the wheels started turning when he got his first Apple computer. With a computer always close by throughout his adolescence, he graduated from Verona Area High School in 2001. He quickly decided to continue his education and sought out a degree, majoring in marketing and business administration. After just a couple of years, he came to realize that college just was not big enough for him and his dreams. In early 2003, Dustin chose to drop out and test his skills and abilities in the real world. In March of 2003, Dustin began working with his father, who at the time was working for DPMG Inc. At first, he was doing smaller jobs like editing websites, all the while, learning the Internet trade and collaborating on business plans and ideas.He worked side by side with Bill, while absorbing every tidbit of information he could about SEO (Search Engine Optimization). |
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He began to notice the ever-changing processes of SEO through observing the work done by the employees of DPMG. Shortly after that, he continued his self-education through the likes of Bob Massa and Search King. Dustin strived for excellence and success, and his plan was to continue educating himself with the necessary knowledge to one day become an industry leader.
Dustin’s always has had big dreams and high expectations of him, and was beginning to see the vast potential his father and the World Wide Web had to offer him. Dustin knew he had the ability to achieve big things. The partnerships Bill had shaped gave him the insight to see just how true this was. Through the partnership between Next Wave, LLC and Bob Massa, Dustin was able to see first hand how Search King operated, profited, and the tools that were required to create a similar dream of his own. |
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Dustin Erickson,
Executive VP & Co-CEO |
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Since 2004, and the birth of Next Wave, LLC, Dustin has been putting much of his efforts into SEO, and has succeeded in acquiring first page rankings in Google for numerous keywords, even making some sites the “authority” of their niche. Another mentor of Dustin’s was a young man from Israel, Lior Yashinski. Dustin and Lior worked hand in hand from two different parts of the globe, via instant messenger, on a daily basis. Lior quickly became a big contributor to Next Wave, LLC in early 2005. Through the teachings of Lior, Dustin learned some of the “darker side” methods of SEO. Yielding fast results, Lior taught Dustin about “manipulative tricks” used to get sites and their niche keywords to the top of Google results. Dustin quickly picked up on these techniques, began applying them himself, and then he too started to achieve great results. Shortly after, Dustin ran into a problem; these fast results and positions didn’t last, and any work that was put into one of these websites could be lost due to the Search Engines penalizing or banning them, since the positions weren’t obtained “legitimately”. This was not part of Dustin’s plan. |
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In light of his findings, in 2006, Dustin decided to take matters into his own hands and was determined to find methods of SEO that allowed his websites to rank and position well, but more importantly, keep those positions. He likes to call this technique, “white hat SEO”. The fast resulting, manipulative techniques mentioned above he calls “black hat SEO”. |
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After months of research, countless trials, and countless errors, Dustin finally found the answers he was looking for. He has since been successful in bringing websites to the top of Google, Yahoo and MSN for some of the toughest keywords on the Internet, ranging from: Engagement Rings to Diamonds, Drug Rehab to Medication, SEO to Content, and many more. |
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Dustin plans to continue his ventures with Next Wave, LLC while continuing to look for new innovative ideas that will improve the growth of the company. |
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