Real Estate Investing in Mississippi:Mobile Homes,Rental Property, & Slow Strategic Growth

Nathan Shelby (00:00)
Yeah, it is. Having the faith in yourself to trust the decisions that you make is a powerful thing. Especially from a place of confidence and experience and not ego or pride. It’s a powerful thing. It is. And look, we can get as deep into personal development and, you know,

Quentin (00:05)
It’s a game.

Man, you see, you talking. Listen, right? Yeah, right, Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Shelby (00:27)
Discipline, discipline over motivation and you know

persistence over luck. You know, I mean there’s just there’s so many things that I try to I try to just refocus my mind on every day, you know.

Quentin (00:33)
Mmm.

Yes.

Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host Q Edmonds. And you know what I’m gonna say. I’m excited to be here today. I have another fantastic guest and y’all know this is what gets me excited is when we talk to people that’s doing things their way. We all could literally be doing the same thing in real estate, but because each every last one of us are different.

we’re always going to be doing something a little bit different. And so it excites me when I can peek through the lens of someone else. And so today I have someone here. I’m gonna him tell you all about what it is that he does, how he got to inherit, to, I didn’t want to try, I was trying not to kind of drop a little seeds, but how he got into, he’s laughing because he heard me say, y’all probably didn’t catch it. But how he got into the business. That’s what I wanted to say.

Nathan Shelby (03:05)
you

Quentin (03:06)
I

am so excited to introduce you all to Mr. Nathan Shelby. Mr. Nathan, how you doing today, sir?

Nathan Shelby (03:13)
I’m doing good man, I appreciate you having me.

Quentin (03:15)
Absolutely.

That’s what happens, man, when you do about four or five days a day, sometimes you get tongue tied. Sometimes it’s muscle memory, but sometimes you get a little tongue tied, man. So I’m excited to have you here. And listen, man, I kind of want to dive in. I would love for you to tell the people what’s your main focus these days. Give us a little bit of an origin story, kind of how you got started, how you got to the place where you are now.

Nathan Shelby (03:20)
Hahaha ⁓

Quentin (03:40)
And then man, tell them where you are in the world. People love to know where you are geographically, just in case they like, ⁓ this person is close. Maybe we can do business together. So tell them what it is you do, your origin story and where you are. Mr. Nathan, have the floor,

Nathan Shelby (03:52)
So I’m located in North Mississippi, probably about 20 minutes outside of Oxford where the University of Ole Miss. And been in real estate investing since about 2016, so about 10 years. Right now our portfolio is split. We have three single-family homes and five mobile homes. I own one of those mobile homes.

and rent it out and the other four are lot rents. So it’s kind of a small scale mobile home park, I guess you could picture it. And we’re focused right now on new construction single family. We have one going right now and the plan is to piece of property we have we’re developing the plan is about five or six more.

Quentin (04:27)
Catch you.

Absolutely. I love it, man. Well, tell me a little bit about how you got into the real estate space. I’ll let you take the lead on how much you want to say, but how did you get into the real estate space? What are you with the background? Has it always been real estate? Talk to me a little bit about it.

Nathan Shelby (05:43)
So I went to high school, did not go to college. I was in the military for a few years. Met my wife, to keep a long story short, she was in college and her grandmother had, she ran several businesses, a big entrepreneur and had a few rental properties. And ⁓ what she had was four mobile homes that she owned and rented out for a long time. And

She had sold them all throughout the years. They’d gotten older, sold some of her businesses, basically retired. And she kept one mobile home. And that is where my wife lived while she was going to college. So when we got married, we lived there while she was finishing school. Her grandmother passed away. And she lived right down the road a few, two years, I guess, after we got married, or a year and a half.

Quentin (06:24)
Gotcha.

Nathan Shelby (06:37)
And we moved to her house and then had property. Of course, I’m working young, not making very much money. And she’s still in school. So we started the lot rent basically to try to offset having to pay the taxes on the property. once we got somebody in there ⁓ after we sold the mobile home that we lived in, which is probably one of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made was

Selling it and you know somebody purchased it and moved it off of the property and Looking back now. I wish I had kept it You know I could have gone either done a little light remodel and you rented it But we sold it put a little money in our pocket ⁓ and then got somebody in there about ⁓ Early 2017 to rent one of the lots and they bought a brand new mobile home moved it in on our property

just paid for it to be there. And that was kind of our proof of concept, you know, after me, you know, just, just bugging the fire out of my wife about it for, you know, about a year and her telling me, you know, that’s, that’s, you know, anyway, but, and we got somebody in there doing that and we kind of, focused on that kind of as we got our lives going young, you know, newly married and, grew into four or more lot rents. And then we had a, a,

decent base, you know, and then moved out of her grandmother’s house, remodeled it, rented it out. There was another building on the property that her grandmother had a small business in, and we remodeled that building, made it into a single family home. then last year, we stepped outside of that property for the first time and purchased a single family home.

And so that’s kind of our start and growth throughout the past 10 years.

Quentin (08:30)
Gotcha. I love it. I absolutely love it, And as you was talking, I was writing things down, kind of like your resume. Like you said, 10 years investing, focusing on new construction, went to high school, no college, military. So you have really worked your way into a nice, successful position.

I would love to know, I have a saying, Mr. Nathan, said, destiny has no wasted moments. That’s a saying I say probably every podcast, right? Because we are, we are an accumulation of moments in our life, a compound of just like decisions in our life. And I realized that as we go along the journey, we borrow pieces from every part of our journey to make us who we are today. Right? And so I would love to know, man, throughout this journey, what has destiny, what has these moments taught you about yourself? Has it taught you discipline?

Nathan Shelby (09:15)
That’s right.

Quentin (09:23)
resilience, humbleness. Like what has this journey taught you about you, Mr. Nathan?

Nathan Shelby (09:27)
It’s taught me a lot. Discipline definitely being one of the things because over the past 10 years, we have grown, but we’ve done it slowly. We’ve tried to keep our debt low. We’ve tried to really do it strategically. ⁓ Of course, we started out to replace our W-2 income, which at that time would have been very easy. life changes, careers change, and you wind up where you are.

But it’s really taught me discipline and self-confidence, even more so than, you know, I had a, when I was in high school, I had a science teacher who also coached the football team. And my sophomore year of high school, he came to me and convinced me to try out for the team. And I owe him everything because he convinced me to walk out there and give it a shot.

And I have taken that to heart and I’ve tried to do that ever since. But definitely self-confidence, discipline, ⁓ and just, you know, that it can be done. You know, starting, you know, a little bit unfairly like we did, you know, it’s easy to, you know, but we’ve also taken what we had and built something and we’ve developed processes and, you know, I’ve tried to treat it like it was a, you know, out of state multi-unit portfolio.

since the very beginning, know, as far as rent collection through softwares and running background checks and trying to, trying to do everything that everybody said you should do in all of the, you know, podcasts and content and books and everything I tried to consume as we were getting started.

Quentin (11:47)
Man, I love how you gave a shout out to your coach. I love how you talked about confidence, because confidence is a game changer. When you start believing in yourself, when you start trusting yourself, it’s a game changer. And similar to you, I played high school basketball, know, small school, small Christian school here in Maryland, in Baltimore. But my senior year, I made a, I put some goals out there for myself. said, hey, one, I want to make the All-Star team. Two, I want to, we had a leadership.

award and I was like, want to win this leadership award and I want to be and win six men coming off the bench. And I achieved those goals. like, it just is that those moments have carried me through my life. Right. It’s like really, it’s torture. Like, man, when you put your mind to something, you can do it with discipline, with strategy, with with certain, you know, exercise preparation practice. And so I love that you brought up.

Nathan Shelby (12:32)
Yeah, yeah.

Quentin (12:45)
confidence because it’s a game changer, especially us as men. When we got confidence in our self, confidence in our tool belt. And when I say tool belt, mean, you know, metaphorically, like when you know you can call on certain gifts in yourself, that’s going to power you forward in every situation is a game changer, man. So I absolutely love that you mentioned that. Absolutely, man.

Nathan Shelby (13:00)
Right.

Right.

Yeah, it is. Having the faith in yourself to trust the decisions that you make is a powerful thing. Especially from a place of confidence and experience and not ego or pride. It’s a powerful thing. It is. And look, we can get as deep into personal development and, you know,

Quentin (13:11)
It’s a game.

Man, you see, you talking. Listen, right? Yeah, right, Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Shelby (13:33)
Discipline, discipline over motivation and you know

persistence over luck. You know, I mean there’s just there’s so many things that I try to I try to just refocus my mind on every day, you know.

Quentin (13:39)
Mmm.

Yes.

One of my mentors said, consistency be intensity any day. So if you can be disciplined and be consistent, because sometimes, and you know, it’s just, I mean, it is what it is. Sometimes that intensity does come from ego, thinking that we can just brute our way through sometimes. And sometimes that’s just not going to happen. So it’s how you got to memory that consistency up, you know? So I’m with you. And that’s something we talk about Nathan here.

Nathan Shelby (14:03)
Right. Right.

Quentin (14:11)
is the self-development. Because one thing I learned about real estate owners, real estate, when you have it as a business, the constant in that is you. So you constantly have to be growing. You constantly have to be in a mindset, in a perspective of like a growth mindset and not, you know, a fixed mindset because fixed mindset, you’ll stop growing. You’ll stop progressing. So I definitely tell about self-development a lot here because it is a part of what we do. You have to grow you in order to grow your business. That’s what I believe.

And so, yeah. Absolutely. So, man, tell me, what’s the next real goal for you? What are you looking to solve at Scale Next,

Nathan Shelby (14:41)
yeah, yeah, believe I agree with that 100%.

So we have a part of the property that we had here did it was seven acres. It’s Rectangle along the it’s out in the county along the road one side of it is all road frontage. It’s fairly flat and so What we’re working on now is which has been the goal since we got started but finally get into a you know a capital point at a you comfort point to kind of step off is to build that completely out and then

Hopefully have all those filled. That will put us right now we’re at eight doors. I’m probably gonna add another mobile home to the mobile home side of the property of the business. And so that will put us at nine. The new construction going now 10. So hopefully the next two years the goal is to be at 15. And then income and equity standpoint, the long term goal

Quentin (15:37)
Mm, let’s go.

Nathan Shelby (15:43)
Of I’m always looking for deals outside of that property, but that’s kind of our business focus at the moment. ⁓ But the long-term goal recently, what I’ve really been looking into and digging into is becoming an accredited investor. So that’s kind of the short-term, today, tomorrow, next year, two years, and then who knows, four or five years.

Quentin (16:49)
Yeah, man, I love it. I love the goals. love the, I love how you got timelines to it. I love the trajectory. I absolutely love it. And there’s no doubt in my mind, cause what I hear you, I’m hearing that you’re growing at a smart rate. You know, some people can grow too fast and not be able to handle some of the, you know, influx of pressure, time, just different things that come along with it. And so I love the way you’re growing. You’re growing at a strategic place.

Nathan Shelby (17:13)
Right. Right.

Quentin (17:17)
And strategic pace is actually the word I’m gonna say. I wanna get your perspective, because I always like to talk about relationship and kinda, I even sprinkle in the word community within real estate, because I don’t think we do anything by ourself. just, you whether you need contractors, whether you need whatever, like you need people in order to push the vision forward, right? So I always ask people their perspective on the word relationship. And so I wanna get your perspective on relationship.

within business, within real estate, is it important to you? Have it served you well? Tell me a little bit on your perspective with the word relationship.

Nathan Shelby (17:54)
It definitely has. So we have a friend group ⁓ that developed naturally over just in the community people we know, we’ve met over the years and ⁓ it’s all kind of developed into a real estate friend group because ⁓ we have now just about everybody in that group just naturally over time has some type of investment property. Some people have more than others, know, different types, but that allows us to really bounce ideas off of each other.

Quentin (18:09)
Yeah, good.

Nathan Shelby (18:23)
and ask questions and hey, if you were gonna do this or hey, take a look at this house, what do you think? Just different perspectives and opinions and really helps you and sometimes just being able to pick up the phone and call somebody and talk it out to them will help you figure out what you’re trying, what you’re really thinking or what you’re trying to figure out without really even needing an answer from them. And so we’re very fortunate for that. And then just from a…

Quentin (18:46)
Yeah.

Nathan Shelby (18:52)
Of course, from a contractor standpoint ⁓ and a tenant standpoint, you know, just trying to treat people right, have nice properties ⁓ and people who do work for you or that you contact on a regular basis, you know, paying them on time. We’re trying to maintain a good relationship. ⁓ And then everything from like the city or the county office here, you know, the land development code enforcement, ⁓ just naturally getting to know people.

Quentin (19:10)
Yes sir.

Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Shelby (19:22)
without an agenda,

just throughout the years. I believe that strong relationships will help you a lot. ⁓ Just getting to know people and trying to be somebody that somebody else would want to know. Yeah.

Quentin (19:36)
Yeah,

I love that perspective. I believe relationships build community, right? And I believe healing happens in community. And we have people around you that’s of common unity, people who’s going to support you. Like, healing happens. And healing just means to be made whole, right? And so when you have a support system around you, I think

financial healing happens because people will help you, know, lead you to deals. I believe just mental clarity happens because you have somebody that you can talk to. So I just think relationships, they transform into community and community, so much healing and support happens in the ecosystem where you can talk to somebody and ask for help and vice versa. You know, you be able to help somebody else. And so I think relationship is so much of everything in real estate, but just in life period, if I’m just being honest.

Nathan Shelby (20:11)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

Quentin (20:30)
I just think it’s important in life. Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Shelby (20:31)
yeah. And definitely real estate because even, mean, this has all been a very positive conversation, but our track record over the 10 years has not been without mistakes. Has not been without the look back of, that was dumb. Why did we this? We should have that. developing friendships and people who can share that and.

Quentin (20:41)
Wow.

Nathan Shelby (20:55)
see you’re calling people and say, man, I did this and that was, you but then also getting the phone call back, you know, to make you, make you feel a little better sometimes that, you know, you’re not the only one out there making mistakes and bouncing off the walls, trying to get, you know, trying to stay in one direction. So yeah, it helps, it helps a lot to have people to have people to talk to that understand, you know, whether it’s life or business or real estate or, know, however, like you said.

Quentin (21:14)
Yeah.

Yeah. So well said, man, because we need a place to talk about our failures. Right. And I often say, that failure is actually fertilizer. That’s what failure is. Right. And fertilizer, when you put the seed down in fertilizer, it grows. So when you can root yourself and understand it, everybody has failure, that this is just an opportunity for me to grow. You can take the nutrients from that situation and let it grow you. That way later on, you’re looking back, like you said.

You’re telling your experience, like, I did that. You’ll get over it. And maybe this is a better way to look at it now or go about doing it now. And so I love the fact that you said that having somebody you can talk about your shortcomings to. And I know some people shy away from the welfare of you, but there’s no success without failure. It’s just part of the game.

Nathan Shelby (22:08)
There’s not.

Yeah. Yeah. Everything, everything, everything happens for a reason, whether it’s positive, positive or negative, you know, and it’s sometimes it’s, you know, it’s hard to see it in the moment, whether it’s positive or most of the time negative, but you know, usually if you take a second and you look back through, you know, there’s, there’s reasons why things happen and you, you know, you wind up doing this or not doing that. You know, if you pay attention, pay attention, you’ll see them in my opinion. Yeah. Yeah.

Quentin (22:33)
Yeah. Yeah, no, I agree. And I think that’s

that goes to the point to have a community because you’re so close to it. Sometimes you’re like, this is the end of the road. I don’t know what to do. then somebody like, no, it’s OK. This happened. Have you thought about doing this? So you’re right. It’s all of it. Like, yeah, I you just said it so eloquently, Bro, listen, I could talk to you forever. Like, is literally just scratching the surface of the different topics that we can get into.

Nathan Shelby (22:44)
Right.

Yeah.

Quentin (23:03)
But man, I appreciate you being here, Nathan. If someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you,

Nathan Shelby (23:12)
So Facebook is probably where I’m most active. That’s where we list all our properties and do everything. So Nathan Shelby and then Shady Grove Properties is our Facebook page. Of course, it’s on Instagram also. Instagram is at Nate Sheld and then Shady Grove Properties. yeah, mean, if anybody wanted to reach out, I I love to talk real estate.

over the years except for our small free group and probably even some of them, everybody that I know personally has gotten pretty sick of hearing me talk about it. that’s part of the reason, part of the reason of the podcast idea, know, is, hey, sit around and talk real estate, man, it doesn’t get any better than that. And I’m running out of people. So.

Quentin (23:53)
Look, that’s right. the

nuggets you dropped here, somebody watching this is going to appreciate this. The people you’ve been talking to, they may not appreciate it. Like, here it goes again. No, you are definitely in the right place. Because people like me, they’re sitting there taking notes as you talk. So trust and believe, you’re in the right place for sure.

Nathan Shelby (23:58)
Ha

Yeah, but I mean it you know anybody you know send me a message I mean my phone number is on there You know that may change one may change one day, but that’s my cell phone You know send me a message text me call me you know I’d love to talk if you got a question. I’ll try to help I may not know but I’m making help you find out you know

Quentin (24:27)
I love it, man. So, Nathan, let me say three things to you, sir. First, thank you for your time. We appreciate your time. Thank you for being here. Could have been anywhere in the world, but you was here. So thank you for your time. Secondly, thank you for your story, man. What I like to say is the gift of your transparency, even like the gift of your vulnerability. ⁓ I believe that stories have a way of planting seeds in people. You never know, you may never see the growth, but you plant a seed that can literally course correct them, have them change their perspective. And so…

I thank you for planting seeds today. And lastly, man, thank you for your mindset, the way you think and bringing that perspective and mindset to this platform. I appreciate you being here.

Nathan Shelby (25:06)
Yes, sir. appreciate the opportunity. Most of what I’ve accomplished and done has been taking in content like this, just hearing other people talk about why and how they did what they did. So hopefully it’ll help somebody.

Quentin (25:19)
Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you so much, Well, listen, y’all heard Mr. Nathan looking at show notes, check him out, get in contact with him, especially if you’re in the Mississippi area. But definitely make sure you’re subscribed here, because I keep telling you, we’re going to keep bringing up amazing people just like Mr. Nathan. So sir, I say thank you again. And everyone else, y’all have a fantastic day.