How Specializing in Rare Tech Systems Can Elevate Your Consulting Rates to $200/hr+

Want to hit $200/hour as a consultant? Stop trying to be everything to everyone. The real money isn’t in general tech work—it’s in solving problems most people can’t touch.

Why Rare Tech Systems Are Your Secret Weapon

I learned this the hard way. For years, I chased cloud projects like everyone else. Then I noticed something: while we were all fighting for the same work, banks and insurance companies were desperately trying to find someone who understood their 40-year-old COBOL systems.

That’s when it clicked. Specializing in rare, complex tech systems turns you from a commodity into a lifeline. These systems:

• Keep Fortune 500 companies running
• Have almost no qualified people left who understand them
• Can’t afford to fail—ever
• Pay premium rates to fix

Think of it like a 1957 Chevy Bel Air. Most mechanics would rather work on modern cars. But if you know how to fix those old V8s? You can name your price. That’s where I found my niche: legacy systems most developers won’t go near—mainframes, proprietary databases, the whole forgotten tech stack that still powers the world.

How to Find Your Own Rare Tech Niche

Finding your specialty isn’t about picking something cool. It’s about finding what’s:

1. Sitting in your project history—what do you keep getting asked to fix?
2. Most companies struggle with (hint: the boring, old stuff)
3. Still critical to business operations (spoiler: most legacy systems)
4. Few people actually understand

For me, it was COBOL. Not because I loved it, but because I noticed every bank had the same problem: their mainframe systems worked fine, until they suddenly didn’t. And when they didn’t? They needed someone fast. That’s where I stepped in.

How to Actually Charge $200+/Hour

Most consultants price by the hour. That’s the problem. When you solve rare problems, you’re not selling time—you’re selling confidence that the system won’t crash.

My Simple Value-Based Pricing

I stopped billing hours years ago. Now I look at three things:

1. How much would this cost the client if it fails? A COBOL crash at a bank? Millions per hour.
2. What happens if you can’t fix it? Reputations, compliance issues, lost revenue.
3. How soon do they need it fixed? Emergency rates for emergency situations.

One client paid me $400/hour to debug a mainframe issue. Not because I’m “the best” but because their system was losing $50,000 every hour it was down. My price reflected that reality, not my time.

The Formula That Gets Me Premium Rates

Here’s exactly how I calculate what to charge:


Base Value Rate = (Client's potential loss from failure / 100)
Time Multiplier = 1 + (Urgency factor 1-10 / 10)
Final Rate = Base Value Rate × Time Multiplier × Expertise Factor (1.5-3.0)


It works. I’ve gotten $250/hour for a COBOL audit, $500/hour for critical mainframe debugging—all because I’m solving problems others can’t.

Finding the Right Clients (Who Will Actually Pay)

When you work with rare systems, you don’t chase clients. You find the ones already struggling with these problems.

Where to Look for High-Value Opportunities

These industries live and die by their legacy systems:

• Banking (their COBOL systems process 90% of transactions)
• Insurance (they’ve got mainframes running since the 80s)
• Government (dozens of agencies running ancient systems)
• Healthcare (those patient records? Often still in legacy databases)

How I Actually Get Work

I don’t apply for jobs. Instead, I reach out directly to:

• CTOs at mid-sized banks
• IT directors at insurance companies
• Compliance officers who need legacy system updates
• Engineering managers who inherited old codebases

My first message is specific, not salesy. Something like:

“Hi [Name], I noticed your last earnings call mentioned mainframe incident costs up 25% this year. I help banks reduce COBOL-related incidents by 70% on average. Could we talk about how I might help?”

No fluff. No hype. Just the real problem they’re facing.

Making Sure You Get Paid What You’re Worth

When you’re working on rare systems, your contract needs to be airtight. Here’s what I learned:

My Go-To Statement of Work Structure

1. What’s actually broken: “Random 3-second delays in account lookup queries”
2. What I’m doing: “Performance tuning of COBOL/DB2 integration”
3. What you get:
   • Exactly what we found
   • What needs to be fixed
   • Help with the critical fixes
4. How we’ll know it worked: “Query times under 500ms 99% of the time”
5. Timeline: “Two weeks to assess, one week to implement”
6. Exit clause: “Either of us can end this with seven days’ notice”

Never Forget These Contract Terms

For rare system work, always include:

• Access to the system documentation (they might have it… somewhere)
• Testing environment availability (don’t deploy blind)
• Emergency contact rules (who calls who at 3 AM)
• Knowledge transfer (they need someone else to understand this too)

How to Keep This Consulting Business Running

Specializing in rare systems means tweaking the standard consulting model. Here’s what works:

Mixing High-Value Work Types

I don’t do one-off projects anymore. My work fits three buckets:

• Emergency calls: $400/hour when their mainframe crashes at midnight
• Monthly retainers: Ongoing optimization work at $150/hour
• Training: Teaching their team to handle the basics, $200/hour

Making Yourself More Valuable (Without Working More)

I create detailed guides for common issues:

“COBOL Batch Job Optimization Guide”
– The 5 most common performance killers
– Quick diagnostic tools
– Standard fixes for 80% of issues
– How to roll back if things go wrong

This does three things:

1. Saves me hours on repeat problems
2. Lets me bring in junior consultants for routine work
3. Turns into premium training materials

How to Get Known as the Expert (Without Being Obnoxious)

Your reputation is your biggest asset. Here’s how I built mine:

Content That Actually Shows Expertise

I don’t write fluff. My content focuses on:

• Real technical problems: “Why Your COBOL System’s 10-Year Memory Leak Is Getting Worse”
• Case studies: “How we cut a bank’s mainframe costs by $1.8M/year”
• Industry truths: “Why ‘just replace it’ isn’t a legacy system strategy”

Where I Actually Spend My Time

I don’t try to be everywhere. I pick three places:

1. LinkedIn: Where the decision-makers actually look
2. Medium: For detailed technical posts
3. My website: Where serious clients learn about me

Proving You’re the Real Deal

When you work with rare systems, credibility matters. I highlight:

• Specific experience (“14 years optimizing COBOL systems”)
• Numbers that matter (“reduced mainframe incidents by 75%”)
• Certifications (when they actually mean something)
• Speaking at real tech conferences

The Real Path to $200+/Hour Consulting

Specializing in rare systems changed my entire business. The formula is simple:

1. Find what’s rare but valuable: Like that old car part no one else can fix
2. Charge for the problem, not your time: Their pain point is your price
3. Find the right clients: The ones actually struggling with these systems
4. Write clear contracts: Define success in measurable terms
5. Mix your work types: Emergency calls, retainers, training
6. Build your reputation: Become the person they call first

The market for rare system expertise isn’t shrinking. It’s growing. Companies finally realize they can’t just replace these systems overnight. They need people who can:

• Keep them running smoothly
• Fix them when they break
• Gradually modernize them

That’s where you come in. When you’re the person who can optimize that 30-year-old banking system, fix that mainframe crash, or train their team on COBOL debugging—you’re not just a consultant. You’re an insurance policy. And insurance policies get premium rates.

Most consultants will keep chasing the same cloud projects, fighting over the same rates. You? You’ll be at the bank at 2 AM, getting paid $500/hour to fix a system most developers have never touched.

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