This is hard to pull off - but I think part of the solution is in somehow not competing with the average employee that you can get on the street. For example,

This is hard to pull off - but I think part of the solution is in somehow not competing with the average employee that you can get on the street. For example, you can provide a skill that is not otherwise generally available on the market. Or perhaps by doing consulting but on a closed source product (by doing a per project sale instead). It will be great to brainstorm other such ideas and approaches.