After 30 years in business DRB has grown 73%

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Sponsored by The Boston Foundation

Anthony Samuels didn’t set out to create one of the state’s largest janitorial firms. He initially just wanted to make enough money to start a new company after he sold it.

Instead, the company Samuels started in 1993 has grown to 800 employees who serve clients in a range of industries: commercial office buildings, healthcare, higher education, shopping malls and convention centers.

Revenue at DRB Facility Services grew 34% last year alone, and jumped 73% in three years. Samuels is this year’s Boston Business Journal Fast 50 Executive of the Year.

“I’ve had the right people in place to help me out,” Samuels said of his mentors. Among them are Ralph Martin, former Suffolk County district attorney who is now a partner at the law firm Prince Lobel; Richard Taylor, chairman of the real estate firm Taylor-Smith Cos.; and George Russell, a retired financial executive in Boston.

Closer look:

• Company: DRB Facility Services

• Headquarters: Boston

• 2024 revenue: $36,714,000

• Growth from 2021 to 2024: 73%

Samuels, who grew up in Brooklyn, came to Boston to study to be a drafting engineer. He got a job out of school at Raytheon, he said, but after a few years, he felt like he wasn’t earning enough to live comfortably no matter how many hours he put in. “I realized it wasn’t my passion,” he said.

Samuels decided that starting his own business would give him more control over what he was earning, and chose cleaning services not because of any particular desire to enter that field, but because he figured it had a low barrier to entry — much easier than engineering.

“I said I’d start anything just to get going, and then sell it and start something else that I really wanted to do,” he said.

Once Samuels started DRB, he said, he made sure that one factor that could help compete for contracts — being a minority-owned business — didn’t lead employees to think they could coast.

“As a diverse company, you can get in there,” he said. “But they’re watching you hard. If you don’t perform, you’re out.”

“The clients that work with us, stay with us,” he added. “We deliver what we promise. We do the work. There are no shortcuts.”

Samuels credited his mentors and his CFO, Kenneth Martin, for clearing a path for DRB’s success. He intends to pay it forward to others, too, including through his board service at Roxbury Community College, his alma mater, and the Boys & Girls Club.

Samuels also sees DRB’s growth reflecting having the right people in place throughout the company.

“You have to get good people around you,” he said. “I like to say that they’re working with you, not for you.”

Grant Welker is a Projects Reporter at the Boston Business Journal.