What are best paying jobs in the paint & coatings industry?

Anything where you manage people will give you more value & a better salary than if you’re at the bottom of the food chain. If you get into management, and that works well & you can develop & motivate a team, then you can command a higher salary. Give yourself some targets once you get into that position, and the communicate them upwards to your boss / the owner, etc.

After that, once you beat the numbers, set the bar again a bit above forcast, and negotiate a raise once you get the numbers above X. Since it’s not the first time you’ve done it, they should be fairly receptive. If not, you might shop around for another place that will be more flexible with you. Good employees are very hard to find - we had to let a few go earlier this year, and haven’t been able to find any to replace them at my day job. Instead, we swtiched gears & focused our efforts on other projects.

Good luck.