eventually realized the job wasn’t fulfilling him the way he wanted. “I wasn’t really building the stuff that excited me,” he says. “I’m driven more by legacy than I am by building big houses and making as much money as possible.” The work also came at a personal cost. Because clients in the recreational property market are generally only available outside of normal business hours, Kyle found himself working a fulltime job and fielding client calls in the evenings and conducting client meetings on weekends. His children were growing up without him being present. Just before COVID became a global reality, he and Kristin made the decision for him to sell his ownership stake in the company and strike out on their own. He took a year off to be with his family, and it was during that period that he crossed paths with Morgan Shaver. Morgan had moved to Muskoka in 2018 after years of building in Southern Ontario, where he had gone into partnership with his father – himself a builder – and worked his way from production homes and framing into full custom residential construction. When his father’s company began winding down, Morgan and his family made the move north. He arrived not knowing a single person or trade in the region, but he knew how to build houses. He bought a piece of land, started a spec build, and eventually put the word out that he needed help with some tile work. “Kyle reached out and said he was kind of in between on things,” Morgan recalls. “He came over, did some tile work with me, and then from there we started looking at doing a spec build together to see if we liked each other. And then I MAY 2026
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