A group of services, working together.
Toolbox Strategies began in 1996. For 25 years it helped Canada's developers and homebuilders shape communities and bring them to market. In 2021 that work continued as KLBR8, adding AI, web and research. Toolbox Strategies brings the two together.
Real-estate marketing and brand building for residential builders, and websites made to be found in the age of AI.
Find out what AI assistants tell your customers about your business, and see it change as you fix it.
Family history and DNA inquiry, with every claim backed by evidence. Home of the Ancestral Hall.
Toolbox Strategies
Cary Kokkonen is a marketing, real estate development and communications professional with more than 30 years of experience helping shape communities, build brands and connect new home developments with the people who ultimately live in them.
Cary founded Toolbox Strategies in 1996 and led it for 25 years, and since 2021 has carried that work forward with KLBR8. Across three decades in Canada's real estate development industry, he has advised some of the country's largest developers and homebuilders on urban master planning, product development, market positioning and community strategy. He has received over 250 industry awards.
Working closely with urban planners, architects, developers and sales teams, Cary has participated in the planning and development of numerous award-winning master-planned communities. His role has often extended well beyond traditional marketing, providing strategic market insight during the earliest stages of community planning and helping development teams understand evolving homebuyer preferences, product expectations, lifestyle priorities and purchasing motivations.
A key part of Cary's work has been translating those insights into stronger communities, helping inform housing mix, product positioning, amenity strategies, neighbourhood character and the overall lifestyle promise behind a development.
For more than 30 years, Cary has also been an active member of industry organizations including the Canadian Home Builders' Association (CHBA), Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD), and West End Home Builders' Association (WEHBA). Throughout his career, he has participated in key advisory roles within the real estate development industry, contributing a market-focused perspective to discussions surrounding housing, community development and changing buyer expectations.
Today, through KLBR8, Cary combines this development knowledge with extensive expertise in brand strategy, creative direction, advertising, digital marketing and sales-driven campaign development. Having worked through multiple real estate cycles, he brings a strong understanding of how communities must evolve in response to market conditions while maintaining a clear and compelling long-term vision.
At the centre of Cary's approach is the belief that successful communities are built around more than homes. They are built around a clear understanding of how people want to live. His work focuses on identifying that opportunity, shaping the right product and community experience around it, and ultimately crafting the lifestyle promise that connects buyers emotionally with a place.
Outside of his professional work, Cary has spent many years living on an island in Georgian Bay, where he has developed a deep appreciation for the environment, boating and life on the water. He is also actively involved in his local community, supporting communications around boating safety, environmental stewardship and community initiatives.
KLBR8
Elizabeth Kokkonen is a digital strategist and the owner of KLBR8, where she leads the agency's work in AI, web and research.
For eleven years she worked with Toolbox Strategies on social and digital campaigns for real estate and lifestyle clients, while building satellite projects of her own. Those threads now come together at KLBR8. Her background spans multimedia and digital communication, design and web development, along with years in international commercial work for global brands.
Since founding KLBR8 in 2021, she has focused on what comes next: how businesses are found and described when people ask AI assistants instead of searching. She builds the agency's AI visibility tools, its websites and its market research, so each client's own confirmed facts are what the market sees.
Alongside the agency, she is a genealogist and researcher, with formal study in genetics, epigenetics and family-history research since 2016. She offers guided genealogy and DNA inquiries, grounded in one principle that runs through all her work: what belongs to a person or a business stays theirs.
She lives on an island in Georgian Bay.