Why Revenue Growth Doesn't Always Mean More Profit
About this episode
Sam Cuccurullo has spent more than four decades in commercial real estate — senior leadership roles at CBRE, DTZ and Cushman & Wakefield, running large property and asset-management teams across Australia and Asia Pacific. He's seen plenty of businesses chase a bigger top line and end up with a worse bottom line. That's where we started.
The trap is seductive: revenue is going up, so it feels like the business is winning. But growth bought through the wrong work — low-margin contracts, deals you should have walked away from, expansion ahead of capability — quietly eats the profit it looked like it was creating. Sam's argument is that mature operators learn to want the right revenue, not just more of it.
We dug into the discipline that makes that possible: stronger go/no-go decisions on what to bid for, valuing client relationships over raw volume, getting incentives and compensation aligned with profit rather than activity, and the underrated skill of saying no. Sam also reflected on leading teams through mergers and acquisitions, and what the best CEOs he worked under actually did differently — usually, creating alignment and shared purpose across the whole organisation.
What you'll learn in this conversation
- Why revenue growth and profitability are not the same thing
- How companies grow their way into lower margins
- The hidden costs that quietly erode profit in service businesses
- How to choose the right opportunities instead of chasing everything
- Why disciplined go/no-go decisions matter more than win rates
- Why client relationships beat raw volume
- How incentives and compensation structures shape profitability
- What the best CEOs do to create alignment across teams
- Lessons from leading teams through mergers and acquisitions
- How strategic focus compounds into long-term performance
Sam Cuccurullo
Sam Cuccurullo is an experienced commercial real estate executive with more than four decades of leadership across Australia and the Asia Pacific region. He has held senior roles at CBRE, DTZ and Cushman & Wakefield, including leading large-scale property and asset-management teams across multiple markets. His expertise spans commercial real estate, business transformation, operational leadership, client strategy and building high-performing organisations. Today he works with boards and leadership teams to improve strategy, growth, profitability and long-term performance.
Full transcript
Transcript coming soon — we're cleaning it up now. In the meantime, watch or listen to the full conversation using the links above.