Meet Jonathan Krebbs

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jonathan Krebbs. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jonathan below.

Jonathan, so great to have you on the platform and excited to have you share your wisdom with our community today. Communication skills often play a powerful role in our ability to be effective and so we’d love to hear about how you developed your communication skills.

It’s developed slowly through making mistakes. I’ve learned the hard way to pause before firing off a snarky email or text if I am upset. Letting my nervous system get out of fight-or-flight mode helps me communicate more effectively. I have also learned not to handle conflict over email or text messages. Confrontation is unavoidable in life, so I do it over the phone or in person because I know I am much more humane when not hiding behind a keyboard. When people can see my face or hear the tone of my voice, my communication is much more effective. Emails and text messages are great for something like “call me when you can,” but they are not ideal for negotiating a real estate transaction or handling conflict with my spouse! The same is true when working on something where there isn’t conflict. I try to pick up the phone as much as I can so my communication can be as effective as possible.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

You can read about my story and business in my Voyage Dallas Interview: https://voyagedallas.com/interview/meet-jon-krebbs-multifamily-group-knoxhenderson/.

Something I have been working on recently is my ancestry. It all started when was thinking about how many people I am related to. How many 15th great-grandparents would you guess you had? This would be around Christopher Columbus’s time. The answer may surprise you: 131,072. That’s a lot of people! I discovered my 6th great-grandfather, Hugo Ernestus Krebs, came to Pascagoula, Mississippi, from Germany in the 1730s. His house is still standing and last summer I went and visited it. https://lapointekrebs.org/ He lived in Mississippi for 40+ years and never lived in the USA! France controlled the area, followed by Great Britain and then Spain. Pascagoula wasn’t a part of the USA until 1812! My 4th Grand Grandmother was a 3/4 Choctaw, and my family went to Oklahoma with many other Choctaws just after the trail of tears. My grandad was born in Tulsa, and he told me his grandad added a “B” to our name at some point. I discovered another set of my 5th grandparents completely unrelated to my native American grandmother were Greenwood Leflore’s grandparents. At one time, the Chief of the Choctaws was my 1st cousin, 5X removed! I have really enjoyed learning about my family being a part of American history. I highly encourage people to do some research. There are so many people you are related to you are bound to find someone interesting.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Find things you enjoy about life. This advice was given to me and it rings more and more true everyday.

What was the most impactful thing your parents did for you?

They didn’t spoil me. They certainly took good care of me. I never went without. I had more than some other kids I knew. They paid for my teeth to be fixed, and for piano lessons and baseball; I had nice presents for Christmas and my birthday. They even gave me an allowance of $3 a week that jumped to $5 at some point, But they were also very good at saying no, and if I wanted a pair of Jinco jeans, I was expected to work for it. There was always an attitude of hard work from both my parents that was instilled in me. I became a certified babysitter and got my first job in my church nursery at age 12. I worked through high school and college, and I like to brag that I have paid into Social Security every year since 1996, and I turned 40 in August. Now that I am a father, I am trying not to spoil my kids, and it’s hard! I want to give them a wonderful life, but I am always mindful of how much I appreciate something when I work hard for it. I wore those Jinco’s with pride!