It’s a familiar story – boy grows up around his dad’s business, takes an interest in it, wants to follow in his footsteps. Except for one twist. Every year, beginning when he worked during summer vacations from school, Joey Nelson’s dad would tell him this: “Whatever you do, don’t get into the sawmill industry.”

Nelson Bros. Engineering, a small business started in 1992 by Rod Nelson and “a loose band of co-conspirators,” made scanners and optimizers for the sawmill industry. And Rod’s son Joey was hanging around from the start, soaking up all the knowledge he could. By the time he was finishing high school, he was already developing a QC system for Nelson Bros. that scanned railroad tracks for grinding machines.

But Rod told Joey sawmill equipment was a dead-end industry. Problem was, Joey was a little bit obsessed with developing laser-scanning machine vision. So, while he earned a degree in electrical engineering, Joey developed two designs for laser scanners, improving with each design. And when he graduated, he started his own company, JoeScan, to turn that design work into what is now a successful product, the JS-20 3-D laser scanner – which is used throughout the sawmill industry.

So why did he ignore that fatherly advice? First of all, he believes that if you do what you love, and do it well, you can be successful. And secondly, he likes this small market, seeing it as “the Wild West for technology – a place where a small operation can come up with a good idea, get people to believe in it, and be successful.”

Try the simple efficiency of the JS-20, and you’ll understand why he’s right.