Foundation of Integrity

Deep Roots

Drew Erickson spoke at TREK on June 6, 2023. He is an entrepreneur and a longtime resident of Thief River Falls. He and his wife, Brittany, are now raising their two-year-old daughter here.

This third-generation Prowler has deep roots in the community. “My grandfather was raised here, my dad was raised and went to school here, and I graduated from Lincoln High School myself,” he quipped. “Everything in my life revolves around my number one value—family.”

Drew has lived in Thief River Falls his entire life except for the five years he spent in the Twin Cities. He finished an economics degree at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and continued in the metro area for another year to pursue his career.

While living in the Twin Cities, he worked in an 18-story building in downtown Minneapolis. After driving an hour to work every day, he paid $200 a month to park his car, and walked four blocks to his office.

Moving Forward

After his stint in the Twin Cities, Drew moved back to Thief River Falls and reconnected with one of his boyhood best friends. During their growing up years they constantly talked about starting a business.

Now, after decades of life and pursuing other careers, they found themselves coming back to those early conversations about starting a business. Neither one wanted to step away from their existing careers, so they began talking about what they could do to build a business that would generate residual or passive income. They also looked at the skills that each of them had to contribute to a business partnership.

“We’re two completely different people,” Drew said. “I’ve spent fourteen years studying money and he’s spent nine years studying criminal law and construction and woodworking, so real estate investing made sense.”

First Steps

In November of 2022, the two got together at Drew’s office and made the decision to start a real estate investing company. Drew said, “I’ve tried it before and it did not work out, but that’s where I learned one of my two most valuable life lessons. When it comes to business, who you’re working with is far more important than what you’re doing.”

Drew’s first step was to reach out to eleven people he knew who had expertise in real estate. “I was really shocked,” he said. “Ten of the eleven took time to meet with me and let me buy them breakfast or lunch. I was able to pick their brain and learn from them, asking ‘hey, what have you done that worked and didn’t work,’ and things like that.”

“In November, one of the people we sat down with loved the idea and believed in us so much that they agreed to partner with us as an investor,” Drew said. “By December, we were in the process of buying our first property. By February, we officially licensed with the State of Minnesota as Northstars Properties Thief River LLC.”

Drew emphasized, “our entire business is based on integrity. We do everything we can to make money for our families and improve our families’ lives, but we also want the families renting from us to really enjoy renting from us and hopefully have long term relationships.”