For 26-year-old Ryan Lewis, a 2015 graduate of Brownwood High School, his journey through college to attain a psychology degree did not result in a career path one might expect.

Instead, Lewis and his father, Todd, are four years into their own business venture – Lewis Family Lawn Care.

“I got a psychology degree from Texas Tech and a few months before I graduated my dad called and asked what I was going to do, and I told him I didn’t want to do anything with psychology,” Lewis said. “After seeing the different avenues, I wasn’t interested. Then he asked what I wanted to do with my life and I told him I wanted to start a lawn care company. I did that all through high school and we’ve always mowed neighbors’ yards and my grandparents’ yard. He asked if I wanted a business partner and I knew he had a zero turn mower, weed eaters and a trailer so I said ‘heck yeah.’ He told me that he and his dad always wanted to start a gate building business and everything got pushed back before he passed away and they couldn’t do it. So he just said ‘let’s try it.’”

So in 2019, Lewis Family Lawn Care came into existence.

“It’s gone pretty good, but we started right before COVID hit which set us back some,” Lewis said. “We didn’t care if we got sick but we didn’t want to give that nasty virus to some of our clients and our older clients, especially, but everyone worked well with us. They’d leave payments in the mailbox or on the screen door so we could take care of them.”

Regarding all the services Lewis Family Lawn Care provides, he said, “We do lawn care, mowing, weed eating, edging, blowing off all the grass. We build fences like full metal privacy, we also do cedar privacy, and we install a little bit of chain link here and there. We also trim trees, shrubs, bushes and recently I got my irrigation license so we can do valve repair and sprinkler head repair. I can technically do installs but being a two-man show sometimes it’s hard to find time to do everything.”

Lewis Family Lawn Care is a two-man team most of the time, but there has been additional help this summer.

“It’s mostly just me and my dad but we have two high school boys that work for us in the summer time and spring break and Christmas,” Lewis said. “But they go to school at Zephyr so we’ll lose them to two-a-days next week.”

Eventually, Lewis Family Lawn Care hopes to increase the staff.

“We’d like to see it grow where we had a couple more people to free me and my dad up so that we could work together a little more because most of the time we’re in separate trucks,” Lewis said. “I’d like to see it grow to three or four full time employees because my little sister’s a junior at Brownwood and plays soccer so it’d be nice to take some of the weight off my mom and dad so they wouldn’t have to stress every time she has an out of town soccer game.”

Outside of work, Lewis does much of the same – help friends and neighbors in need.

“Most of the time I’m just helping other people do stuff, helping friends out because we have some tools most home owners don’t have readily available,” he said. “I also help a few different people work cattle.”