Let It Be Company is a veteran owned business in Farmersville, Texas training veterans and Gold Star families in four marketable trades — laser engraving, sublimation printing, laser welding and metal fabrication, and AI-assisted design. No slide decks, no ceremonial syllabus. Roger works alongside you at the machine until the work is good enough to sell.
Ask founder Roger Russell why he runs a veteran training program out of a Collin County shop, and the answer is plain: he wants to be the person he wishes he'd had when he came home from the USS America. That's the whole thesis. Everything else is logistics.
The numbers behind the mission
This isn't theoretical work. North Texas has the largest veteran population in the state and one of the largest in the country, and Collin County is where a lot of those families land:
- 386,358 veterans live in the DFW Metroplex — roughly one in four of Texas's 1.6 million.
- ~57,000 post-9/11 veterans in DFW, with Collin County the fastest-growing cohort.
- 22 a day is the widely cited awareness figure for veteran suicide. We share it not to wallow — we share it because every one of those names belongs to somebody who deserved a hand and a reason to keep building.
- 150 hours of free tuition is available to qualified Texas veterans, spouses, and dependents under the Hazlewood Act — administered locally through Collin College's Veterans Resource Center.
- 20 minutes from our shop in Farmersville to the McKinney campus where that benefit gets processed.
Why most veteran job training fails
Here's the contrarian piece. Most veteran job training fails because it treats a veteran like a blank trainee instead of someone who already spent four to twenty years learning under pressure. The rigid syllabus model — week one, week two, midterm, certificate — assumes nobody in the room knows how to absorb new equipment. That assumption gets it backwards.
A Navy machinist's mate already knows tolerances. An infantry NCO already knows how to break down a complex task and run it under load. What they don't have on day one is reps on a fiber laser. So skip the deck and put them on the machine. We did this with our own gear — see how Roger taught himself laser work after retirement. The shortcut wasn't a course. It was tool time.
Audie Murphy is the metaphor for how we run it. The most decorated American combat soldier of World War II — born up the road in Hunt County, raised around Farmersville — was authorized a gold leaf on his Arlington headstone because of the Medal of Honor he earned at nineteen in the Colmar Pocket. He refused it. He asked for the same plain GI marker every other soldier got. That's the standard. Same craftsmanship, same finish, no ceremony. That's how we train.
Skill we teach, where it can lead
This isn't arts and crafts. Each of the four trades on our floor has a paying market in the DFW Metroplex right now. Here's the honest map:
| Skill we teach | Where it can lead |
|---|---|
| Laser engraving on wood, leather, acrylic | Custom-gift business — corporate awards, memorial pieces, retirement gifts. Low capex, high margin, plenty of demand from Collin County HR departments. |
| Sublimation printing on apparel and drinkware | Small-batch e-commerce — Shopify storefront, local fundraisers, team gear for Farmersville ISD and surrounding districts. |
| Laser welding and metal fabrication | Fabrication trade career — read more about why laser welding is a career skill. The xTool MetalFab cuts up to 3/8" carbon steel, welds, and cleans rust in one footprint. |
| AI-assisted design (vector art, mockups, copy) | Freelance design work — turning ideas into finished files for other makers, or grant writing for nonprofits. More on how we use AI in the shop. |
Pick one. Get good. Then decide if you want a side gig, a full company, or a W-2 at a fab shop in Plano. We've seen all three work.
The Hazlewood and Collin College piece
You don't have to take our word for any of this. Twenty minutes west on US-380 — Audie Murphy Parkway, naturally — is the Collin College McKinney campus. Their Veterans Resource Center sits in the Welcome Center, room WC 204. Phone is 972.881.5760, Option 7. Email is vrc@collin.edu. They administer the Hazlewood Act exemption — up to 150 hours of free tuition for qualified Texas veterans, spouses, and dependents — plus GI Bill processing, priority registration, free tutoring, and an $8/day food allowance.
We're working to establish structured training in partnership with Collin College so the credit and the credential line up with the work happening on our floor. The goal is to keep training close to home in Farmersville rather than making veterans commute, and to stack our hands-on hours with whatever Hazlewood hours a student has left.
How a session actually runs
Roger has mentored veterans one-on-one in this on-the-job style since before there was a "program" to speak of. A typical first session at the shop looks like this: walk the floor, point at the machines, ask what the veteran has done with their hands before. Then turn one on. By the end of an afternoon, most people have a piece of finished work in their pocket they made themselves. That's the hook. The curriculum follows the work, not the other way around.
Three rules for actually helping a veteran transition
- Respect what they already know. They learned a hard MOS under hard conditions. Don't restart them at zero — find the overlap and build from there.
- Put a finished thing in their hand on day one. A coaster, a tag, a cut piece of steel. Pride comes from output, not from a slide titled "learning objectives."
- Connect the work to a paying customer. The point isn't the hobby. The point is a livelihood, and that means a real invoice with a real customer's name on it inside the first ninety days.
Who we serve
Veterans and Gold Star families across Farmersville, McKinney, Princeton, Plano, Wylie, and the rest of Collin County. No red tape, no waitlist application packet. A phone call or a contact form is the whole gate. If you can drive to our shop, you can sit at a machine. Every custom order we ship and every piece in our gallery helps fund the next bench.
Why Farmersville is the right place to do it
Audie Murphy's hometown matters here. The town puts on Audie Murphy Day every June, keeps a permanent exhibit at the Heritage Museum, named the bypass after him, and runs the Path of Remembrance at Freedom Plaza. VFW Post 7426 is at 671 W. Audie Murphy Parkway. The Farmersville Times has been publishing weekly for over 140 years, and the brick-street square still hosts the monthly Farmersville Market at the 1920s Onion Shed. This is a town that remembers service without making a show of it. That's the right floor to teach on.
If you're ready — or even just curious — reach out. We'll find the bench.
