Inside the roller‑coaster world of Dale Waterson

Ask most entrepreneurs what keeps them awake at night and you’ll usually hear about people – recruitment, culture, leadership, succession. Ask Dale Waterson, and he’ll tell you straight, his biggest battle is cash.

Dale runs KG Yorkshire, a fast‑growing construction business specialising in carpentry and timber frame packages for major house builders. He describes life in the business as “on the brink of bankruptcy every week” – borrowing at high interest rates, juggling multiple lenders, signing personal guarantees. It should feel exhausting. Somehow, it doesn’t. Spending time with him is energising.

That comes down to mindset, summed up in one line he now lives by:

“It takes just as much energy to think small as it does to think big. So I’m just going to keep thinking big.”

From one‑man band to multi‑million‑pound contracts

Dale’s construction journey began in 1993. After his apprenticeship, he went straight out on the tools as a subcontractor. There was no sick pay, holiday pay or hourly rate - everything was price work. The more he produced, the more he earned. He built a strong one‑man‑band business and did well.

In 2009, he incorporated as KG Yorkshire, named after his sons Kai and George. At that point, the business was still small, with a handful of sites, a couple of joiners and an apprentice. Dale knew his trade inside out and was happy “bobbing along”.

Then the housing crash of 2008–09 hit. Housebuilding “turned off like a tap”. Work slowed, big house builders paused developments and many contractors shrank or folded. Dale did something different – he stepped sideways into the art world!

What art dealers taught Dale about thinking big

During this period, Dale started working with art dealers, including local dealer Jim Starkey and the Tomaso brothers in Leeds. He built pedestals and display structures for old masters, marble and bronze works worth tens of millions. He found himself in galleries and grand houses, standing next to pieces that would sell for £8 million, watching exhibitions that could cost £100,000 to stage and sometimes sell nothing.

What struck him was not the wealth, but the mindset.

“These dealers thought big. They stayed positive even when an exhibition lost money. They saw a £100,000 loss as part of the game, absorbed it, and moved on. They communicated at a high level with clients and collectors, and they were comfortable operating in a world of serious risk.”, explains Dale.

Dale absorbed a lot from that time. He watched how they spoke, how they delegated, how they handled setbacks. One story stuck. Curious about billionaire Eddie Healey, he asked Jim what was Eddie’s “secret”? After thinking, Jim said: “Delegation. He’s very, very good at delegation.”

That simple insight landed hard. Dale realised he could personally knock up the perfect handrail, but someone like Eddie could build Meadowhall. The difference wasn’t skill, it was mindset, scale and the ability to let go and trust other people.

Those years with the dealers gave Dale a new lens on business - think bigger, stay positive, delegate well, and don’t let individual setbacks define you.

Back on site – and climbing fast

As the housing market improved, Dale returned to construction. He began pricing small developments of 10, 20, 30 homes for local developers and did well. Meanwhile, his sons were building their own careers.

With Kai doing occasional site work for him, Dale started reaching out to larger housebuilders. A key step was winning a 70‑home site with Strata in Hull, which gave KG Yorkshire its first taste of bigger, structured projects with national developers.

From there, Dale began tendering for packages with tier‑one builder Vistry, a company turning over around £4 billion a year. Initially, KG won the carpentry and joinery package. Then Vistry asked if they could take on the full timber frame erection.

Dale priced it, refused to be squeezed below fair rates, and eventually won both packages - together worth around three‑quarters of a million pounds. Vistry gave KG a 14‑month build programme. “We looked at the schedule and knew we could build the houses in nine months. The client was sceptical but willing to see what happened. KG delivered the job in nine months.”

Living on the cashflow cliff edge

Since joining FEO, KG Yorkshire’s turnover has increased by more than 800 per cent from its £350,000 starting point, with a realistic ambition of £10m and, longer term, perhaps £30m.

Underneath those numbers lies a tougher reality - cashflow.

Subcontractors want paying weekly, but house builders pay on 30–40 day terms. KG can be owed hundreds of thousands of pounds at any given time, while simultaneously starting new sites that need funding.

To bridge that gap, Dale has borrowed heavily from alternative lenders at rates up to 3% per month and both Dale and his sons have personally financed the business and he’s working hard to refinance expensive loans. He is currently nurturing a banking relationship to borrow up to £1m to take pressure off the cash.

Letting go to grow – and FEO’s influence

A big theme in Dale’s journey is “letting go to grow.” Over the last few years, he has deliberately moved away from day‑to‑day site management, putting Kai and George into more senior roles. Kai now runs multiple contracts managers; George, at 29, has recently replaced himself in a key commercial position – a big step for someone who built the processes and then handed them over.

Many of these moves were sparked by snippets from FEO. Dale didn’t know the phrase “letting go to grow” until he heard it there. A meeting with mentor Adam Walsh shifted his view of turnover when Adam told him never to describe £350k as “only”. A conversation with one of FEO’s founding entrepreneurs, persuaded him not to rush into buying land and building his own developments. The Step Change session prompted him to shut down a wall panel business, which was causing a major distraction. “If something is going to fail, make sure it fails fast so you can move on.”

“Time with FEO is always well spent. I can attend a two hours event and pick up one thing someone says – and I’ll take it away, do something about it and use it.”

Where next?

Looking ahead, Dale’s focus is on sustainable growth, investing in a full‑time accountant producing rolling three‑year cashflows, building better relationships with banks, and eventually bringing in a non‑executive director. It means being more selective about which contracts to accept, rather than saying yes to everything, and building a more stable platform for scale.

He is also investing in himself, including communication and speaker training so he can handle public talks and stakeholder meetings with more confidence. He still calls himself “a joiner who knocks nails in,” but he knows he’s also leading a business with serious potential.

Dale’s story is not a simple celebration of growth. It is about the resolve required to pursue it. Managing real financial pressure, trusting others with responsibility and continuing to see opportunity when the risks are obvious. He may still describe himself as “a joiner who knocks nails in”, but his outlook is now firmly that of a business leader building for scale. For him, thinking big is no longer a slogan - it is the decision he makes every day.

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