welcome to bets on the future where we highlight the various career paths in the electrifying Metals World from the vehicle you ride in to the bridge holding and up metals are everywhere why not in your career too I’m Jennifer BS a Metals industry veteran with almost 20 years experience here to highlight these incredible career paths As Told by the women who are living them Lisa Shelton has been working with prepainted Metals for about 30 years now her background spans working at various companies within the supply chain she started working at the coder who applies the paint to the metal to the service centers who distribute prepainted metal to the paint company that makes the paint that goes on the metal she has a wide view of all the aspects of the supply chain that supports customers who consume prepaint and you don’t need a degree in anything specific to learn the industry prepaint is a niche part of the metals industry and Lisa is a testament to the fact that once you get involved in a part of the metals industry you can move around within the supply chain your career path can take

you in a lot of different different directions the more you learn The Wider your path for job opportunities in the industry can become just jump in somewhere and you’ll be surprised where you can go the metals industry is a great place for women to work your backdrop is fantastic I have to know more like where where are you like did I interrupt a vacation what’s What’s Happening Here well we we bought this thing about a month ago and we’ve been trying to get it ready where we could take longer trips um so this coming week again we’re just doing Friday night and Saturday night close to home in case there’s something that doesn’t work or we don’t have what we need but the longterm plan is to be in it a lot more often and to be doing my job from wherever I am because that’s the beautiful thing about the kinds of jobs that the salespeople have where you can talk on the phone be on the internet just like this I’m you know where I am I can do something like this and that’s the beauty of it but yeah we haven’t

done much with it yet and it’s 25 years old so we’re gonna try to restore it a little bit too we’re excited about it that’s really a fun journey and also I I think it’s it’s it’s great sales pitch for our industry as well not obviously not not every job can can be on the road for those that are listening and can’t see Lisa’s background um it’s a fantastic RV recreational vehicle so uh it’s not your typical off his backdrop that we tend to get on on this podcast so I had I had to ask it looks incredible we’re excited about it for those who are unfamiliar with Lisa uh she has been in the industry for for many years and uh very honored for you to come on on the podcast we’ve spoken had a few conversations in the past our our our paths is only recently crossed you know and the past year so for those who are unfamiliar do you mind just giving a quick background on who you are you know who you work for and and what your experience has been yeah of course well you’re you’re right on

that I’ve been around for a long time you tell by the hair color that being in this industry will give you gray hair unfortunately it happens so I started I started my career in 93 so I’m in my 30th year um right now I started in the prepaint side of the steel industry and I had no idea what I was getting myself into but I started at a coil coater which is where they put paint on coils of Steel um worked there for about five years and then I went to work for one of our customers which was Ryerson and ryerson’s a huge service center um worked there for about 11 years and then went to another service center for a couple of years went to axo Nobel a major paint manufacturer in the coil Coatings industry worked there for about 12 years and lo and behold I am back at Ryerson again for my my second Tour of Duty and uh the entire 30 years that I’ve been in this industry I’ve been working with painted Metal Products which it’s prepainted um we can talk a little bit more about what that means

but 30 years in it Con congratulations and you’re giving the second tour a really a whole new meeting with your with your RV in the background feel like you need to get like a a banner on the side of it like just have it sponsored by ryar as you go across the country through your territory about that and see if I can advertise right I mean you’re talking about pre painted I feel like you’ve got some technology at Ryerson where maybe you could paint out you know some sort of Nice metal ryers inside on the side for for those who are unfamiliar with like just metals and and steel and coils in general what why why prepaint like why would somebody in the supply chain decide to prepaint versus you know making their their final product and then painting it then putting their their touch on it what what are the benefits there so when when a manufacturer is making a product product in high volume um prepaint lends itself to high volume production processes so what you’ll find is that there are certain industries that have gravitated towards it and use it exclusively

it’s it’s uh everyone in their industry has already converted to using prepaint and then there’s other markets and industries where they dabble in it certain parts haven’t high enough volume for it but for the most part if if all you’re painting is a couple of parts here and there it’s not going to make Financial sense it’s kind of like uh anything done in a production environment the more you do the less your cost per piece and in this case it’s the less cost per per ton to put paint on um it’s a highspeed application of paint so we can literally paint a truckload of material in 20 minutes 30 minutes um and these paint systems are specially designed for whatever the person’s making so as an example if you’re making a garage door it’s going to be fabricated to be a certain color it’s going to be um made to live outdoors and and exposure to sunlight and and you know resist fading whereas if you’re making a dishwasher in a kitchen um they’ll have they won’t have the exterior exposure kinds of things but they need to make sure that if someone spills

mustard down the front of their dishwasher it doesn’t leave a stain so there’s food contact things in that paint spec which are very different from some of the outdoor product specifications that you would see for things like a garage door metal roofing okay and so for you know the the everyday person I I’m stealing this from another podcast but essentially when we start getting a little technical about the metals industry I’m going to use my husband Essen who’s in the biomedical field somebody that’s completely unrelated to to what we’re a part of what are some of those common products that your prepaint material goes into like something that the everyday person could understand the the largest part of the market segment and it’s roughly 70% of the things that are painted are on metal buildings and we’ve all seen them um and it goes anything from a pole barn um that somebody might put up a pole barn in their yard to gas station canopies um the tops at the gas stations to they put a new school up and it has a metal roof on it and it’s bright blue or churches they’ll

they’ll put metal roofing on so 70% of the market is served in some part of the metal building whether it’s this the walls or the roof panels and just like any other product they each have different performance things that you would expect because a roof has you know 45 degree facing the Sun that exposure is highly different to something that’s vertical where the sun Only Hits at certain parts of the day and that sort of thing so even in that market you’ll see varying paint products that survive different things that that that gets exposed to um I mentioned you know dishwashers but major appliances is another area where there’s a lot of pre paint used um washing machines dishwashers refrigerators almost all of those have some aspect of painted if they’re not fully made out of stainless there’s probably some prepaint on there um heating and air conditioning uh lighting fixtures the the ballast box lighting fixtures that you would find in the ceiling a lot of that is all all prepainted those are some of the more common consumer industry types of things that you would find prea in that’s very interesting and

it it feels like a niche of the market when in reality when you’re saying 70% of the metal buildings are this particular product I mean how do you even how do you get into this how did you find that particular world that it doesn’t seem like that’s that’s like here’s a college course or a high school course on prepainted material it’s funny because over the years people have asked me you know how did you end up getting into this and my answer every time has been a whole bunch of things went horribly wrong we’re gonna change that narrative we’re gonna we’re gonna have people seeking this out in the future because of this podcast I I it’s it’s just it’s kind of a funny way of of you know breaking the ice with people but honestly um I never set out to be in this industry I set out to I answered this is how long ago this was that you used to answer ads in the newspaper to find a job and I answered an ad for a customer service representative at this which was a coil cater I didn’t know what they

were but I go in and looking looking for a customer service job I was hired um sat down at the desk on my first day on the job and I was like I have no idea you know anything about this I had to learn about steel I had to learn about gauge tolerances I had to learn what galvanized coating thicknesses were um all the things about Metal because every bit of paint that we did always was applied over metal and we had to know about not only the paint but also the metal so Lally literally a great training program at the company where I came from and I I’d say the other half of it is just me being the kind of person that’s curious about how things work and asking a lot of questions and you know finding the people that can help you know with the answers that I needed so but no never never a college course in this um you could probably take a college course and becoming a metallurgist and then learn on the paint side of it but with regard to the the paint side of it there’s

just not a lot that would direct you here and I’ve made a whole career it’s it’s been really impressive and most people like you said would have no idea about this that this is even a career that when you you know I’m looking outside my window and I’m looking at some of the products that you mentioned um most people don’t realize that that’s a career like the products that around our whole life from the vehicles to the bridges to um the air conditioning units because we’re recording this during the summer spoiler alert if this gets released later in the fall but it most people don’t look at the products that that make our lives possible and see a career in it oh no and the other thing not it’s not just carbon metals that get painted there’s a whole whole industry of Aluminum Products gutters downspouts um the RV industry there’s a lot of painted RV products um I mean it’s it’s truck trailer track the the walls of a truck trailer when you see semis driving down the road a lot of that is repainted metal so it’s it really is everywhere it’s

one of these industries that no one’s ever heard of and you have no idea that that’s the way these products are made I’ve always thought it’d be a great episode of How It’s Made yes yes yes it would the the metals industry when you’re talking about you know the the van trailers being made of aluminum so I started on the opposite side of you in terms of the supply chain like you’re more towards the finished product you’re you’re selling to the end consumers the the physical products that people use I am now you know I started off on the other side the scrap met all the recycled materials if you will and when you’re talking about van trailers I learned that van trailers were made out of aluminum siding because I would go to scrap yard s and I would see them ripping them apart uh taking the walls down and then I would buy the aluminum that’s off those van trailers that that’s literally how I figured out how everyday products what they were actually made of did they stick to a magnet I carried a magnet with me all the time right

just because sometimes because of your very wellone paint it’s sometimes difficult from looking at the naked eye to see if that’s aluminum or or or you know Steel Etc and you gota you got to stick a magnet to it yeah well and I I just voted a guy yesterday for a job that he’s been we’ve been talking on and off and he finally wanted to put a quotes together because he’s quoting for a School District in California and he had to as part of his bid for the prepainted metal product he had to disclose the percent of recycled materials that were in what he’s going to be selling to the school district so I mean it’s it’s certainly the kind of thing that carries all the way through the way these products are made it’s important abely and users too it really is when you were saying California I’m not surprised to hear that they were already asking about the recycled materials content it’s it’s coming down the pipeline uh it’s from a carbon emission standpoint there are a lot of Steel Ms that are looking at carbon neutral I’ll say or carbon reduction

methods uh in the United States but generally speaking I mean 70% in growing of the steel Ste Market is made from recycled materials already and that’s just something that’s more or less always been happening at least for for many decades in the United States and it’s growing so it’s it’s it’s something that you’re probably already pretty well familiar with and prepared for when that question comes you can easily say okay this coil came from this particular Mill I already know that it’s generally speaking how much it’s it’s from recycled materials yeah and and in this case even the Mills have some guidance to that right on their website so you just they put it out there because are asking it’s important yes yes absolutely I saw a uh post recently that was talking about um you know manufacturers and they need to you know make more of their products with recycling in mind and I thought that was kind of interesting because cars and metal buildings and and aluminum cans those are all things that have already been in the recycling system like that’s that’s already something that we we’ve been doing so it’s

it’s kind of cool to see people becoming more aware of what we’re already doing and hopefully increasing that amount yeah when you got into the industry uh you answered an ad in the paper uh versus today uh you know you’re able to travel the country work remote what are some of the major differences that you’ve seen or some of the really cool things that have popped up in in your your time in the industry like what what’s some of the biggest changes um well things I would say things have changed a lot over the 30 years but it it has just been mindboggling how much change we’ve had just since 2020 because of you know the coid um be being a sales person um when when they say stay home and don’t travel and you’re not able to get in front of customers and you’re thinking how is this ever going to work and then you know project forward years now since that all started and now customers are very fine with having you know conference calls Zoom calls um the the amount of travel in order to get the job done the way

you did it before is less there is still no substitute for a face-to-face meeting and you know when never possible I try to get in front of customers but that’s that change as a salesperson has just been mindboggling um you know as far as everything else that’s changed over the years I mean I’m I’m struggling for the right words because it’s probably not going to come out politically correct and you can delete this you need yes we we’ll reach out to sky behind the scenes yes because it it was always what I would refer to as a good old boy Network and not a lot of women in the industry and uh I I will tell you that when I joined the paint company that I worked for I started in um November and in January they had a sales meeting an annual sales meeting for the entire team and I showed up at this meeting and I was the only female on the sales team and there were 25 plus people and the the gentleman that I was replacing was retiring after 40 years and I said to him I aren’t

there any other women that work here and he goes no and I said has there ever been a woman in sales here and he goes not since I’ve been here this 40 years um now when I left the company and it you know 13 years some later there were a lot of women in the sales industry so I I have seen a huge shift in uh women getting into this and turning it into a career and you know being a part of it it the mindset about it has really changed so absolutely the the perception that’s out there is that it is mainly male dominated right and to be fair that’s probably pretty accurate but I’ve been in the industry you know almost two decades at this point and even in that short amount of time I have seen a shift in the amount of women that have been in in this industry and part of the reason why I started this podcast is because I have met some incredible women in in my career and throughout the industry and yet when I go and I look online and I look at LinkedIn and

you know the various websites Etc I don’t see the people that I’ve met being represented online and so that’s part of this reason uh for this podcast is to essentially say there are more women in this industry than what the perception is out there and I want to highlight intelligent experienced individuals like yourself on here to help encourage more people taking a look at this seriously so instead of it being a I fell into it by accident I had friends and family I want this to be a huh I listen to Lisa Shelton’s podcast and I was intrigued and I started looking and I found a really great job opport within the metals industry I want people to seek this out and and and your story and you sharing what’s changed what’s coming down the pipeline you know what you’re excited about I think is going to help that that next generation or even somebody that’s looking for a career shift yeah I I agree and I hope you can do that Association of women’s in the metals industry is an entire organization devoted to supporting women in the metals industry and that’s something

else I was definitely more a part of it in the younger part of my career as I’ve gotten older you know not not as much involved but I think that’s a great organization that supports women getting into this industry for sure yes for those that are listening awmi Association of women in the metals industry is my it’s one of my favorite associations in the metals industry and and here’s why obviously I’m a little biased um but it’s one of the very few that are fully vertically integrated so you’re going to able to go to the National event to the chapter or the region event and you’re going to get the person that’s from the recycled material side of things all the way down to the oam right and everybody in between and so from a networking perspective you can see who else is in the supply chain so if you’re in that bubble where you’re on a a team and you might be the only female right uh you get to meet other people that maybe half their team is female but you never would have done business with them you never would have

seen them but you get to go to this event and you see wait a second there are other areas of the supply chain and other companies that may be doing a little bit better job of hiring a more diverse Workforce or maybe they’ve just over the years attracted a certain uh type of employee or person and it’s just it’s a fantastic networking event to Showcase that yes for sure yep what are you looking forward to in the industry like we’ve we’ve you know talked about some cool technology that that you’ve seen that’s an easy question for me to answer the one that there haven’t been a lot of Innovations in the coil coating industry it started the industry started in the 70s I believe it was and it started off where they were painting um aluminum metal for venician blinds the little slats they were painting wild wide coil and cutting little slides and it started as venician blinds and has grown from there um but it was almost always solid colors when when you painted something you know think of of white goods you know washer dryers you know solid colors so the

biggest Innovation that has come out in the industry has been the ability to digitally print foil coated material and literally put any kind of pattern that you want on there and multiple patter patterns within a coil one side of the coil versus another side of the coil would be you know different patterns different colors and this brings so many new opportunities to decor and you know ceiling grids just anything and everything you can think of that might have some volume but want want something other than just a solid color it’s so exciting for me so I I am really excited about this technology there’s right now only one um one mill in the company that or in the country that has this but I expect that that’s going to grow just because I think that that’s going to create some really neat marketing opportunities for companies to start making things out of painted material yes there have been some relatively recent Innovations like that in our industry which for somebody that’s outside this industry is probably like duh that should have happened but sometimes we’re we’re a little we’re we’re a little behind on

some of the uh the Innovations because a lot of the Investments and the technology is invested in other other spaces like medical or obviously Tech um so there are a lot of opportunities to take those individuals that have that experience from other Industries and transfer it to the metals industry like the I you know the Innovation that you just talked about yeah yeah I’m excited and you know different compan the nice thing about working at ryer is that we we service so many different industries that being able to come in and talk about this to somebody that makes like a window box fan or you know somewhere else like the garage do doing doing something that looks like a plank piece of of wood rather than the way the the wood doors are now it looks like the entire door is a single piece of wood well you could do plank like hard floring put that across a garage door and it you can’t do that in in another type of a print process so I’m I’m just really excited about getting in front of the diverse types of customers that we get in

front of as a service center and talking about this neat technology that’s out there that’s never been there before no it hasn’t and I have a friend in the interior design world she works for a major publicly traded company that has retail locations across the United States and she came into town relatively Rec recently and I had just actually gone to somebody that was working on printing coils with that wood grain on it so that you know obviously it could weather the outside a little bit better than sometimes your traditional Lumber options and also from a sustainability standpoint they were able to source that material those coils from recycled materials uh you can’t always do that on the lumber front right and so I was talking to her about this and the company she works for is very much on a sustainable path and I showed her these samples and she was very excited about the opportunity to to use these within and on the outside of their their locations and I think it’s just it’s a marketing you know just to get that in front of people so that they even know that

that’s an option yeah yeah and definitely when a company says we have we have stainability goals we have recyclability goals that these are the kinds of products you want to you want to bring to them because they’ll be excited about what they look like and they’ll be excited about meeting a goal with something that looks that neat so yes that it can be sustainable and also an excellent long-term decision because you don’t want to be replacing that in you know five years or having to repaint it or something along those lines like that is going to be a longer term investment for you absolutely yeah is there any advice that you would give to somebody that’s looking to get into this industry anything that you’ve learned over the years or just anything in general to to help kind of encourage more people getting involved well certainly you know you you mentioned it when you talked about awmi that you can get in this thing all the way from the recycling all the way to the OEM and and any company that’s making something that’s made out of metal is going to have a

use for metal product you might find your way into this industry as starting with the OEM that makes things out of metal and then work your way back up through that supply chain or like I did I was at the low end of the supply chain and worked my way to the other direction um there’s no right or wrong way to get into it just get into it just get in there and try it and ask questions and I think my other piece of advice um would probably be seek out a mentor seek out a person who you look up to who you respect who you think can help you in making good decisions to guide your career because um when I look back on some of the things that helped me be successful it’s because I had people that I worked with and worked for that I feel like they coached me they believed in me they they saw my desire to learn and they wanted to help me learn more so ask questions there’s no such thing as a dumb question and you know find people that are willing to help you

with your understanding and and you can you can just do a lot just by being that kind of a personality where you just want to learn that’s probably the the best piece of advice for for the metals industry is you know to tie it into the the beginning of our conversation there isn’t a school for this I mean yes you could go to metal ory school but the most training that you’re going to get is on the job and it’s from individuals like yourself that have the knowledge and the experience and we we teach it we teach it to the next generation and it’s just I’ve I’ve learned the most from site visits and and talking to individuals like yourself and learning from folks that are in this industry it it really is a a very welcoming and uh knowledge sharing industry yep everybody that works in it if they’ve been in it they a lot of people just get in it and stay they might move around they might not be at the same company St in the industry because it’s exciting and it’s always something new to learn and there’s always things

going on um working at a a mill or working at a steel service center if you work at an oem you have one endus product and that’s probably what you’ll learn the most about but the nice thing about working at a service center or a coil cater or a mill is you get to experience a lot of different Industries I mean I remember my first Tour of Duty at Ryerson all the different plants that I went through and watching how they make a Coleman cooler I was just like Blown Away how they make a Coleman cooler or how they make lighting fixtures it is so interesting if you have any interest in how things come together and you know how they’re made it’s there’s no better industry to expose you to all of those things in this one so I I could not agree more and just for for uh you know people that are listening that are unfamiliar with Ryerson Ryerson is a huge publicly traded company you have 340,000 uh employees 100 plus locations so I I’m not surprised to hear that you were able to see all the different things

that you know your products go into Ryerson is one of those names that most people are probably not familiar with but I guarantee you they probably have a Ryon product in their home at at some point been around for many many many many many years too y Lisa thank you so much for for coming on taking the time I appreciate it you’re you’re you’re you’re prepping for going on the road so I I I I I love this it’s not the traditional office backdrop it just really gives the better perspective of all the different options that are available in The Metalist industry so again thank you thank you so much for for coming on thank you I appreciate it it was fun