The Cobol Cowboys Keep on Riding // Money Isn't Everything 2x04

Welcome to Money Isn’t Everything. I’m Mary Wisniewski, Cornerstone Advisors editor-at-large and host of the show.

Today on Money Isn’t Everything, I am chatting with Eileen and Bill Henshaw from the firm they dreamt of together, and one I’ve been curious about for years, the Cobalt Cowboys.

They’re frankly living out the plot of a Hollywood movie.

They co-founded this firm that connects pros who still know COBOL to help tackle issues at banks and other corporations when they arise.

Not so many people are fluent in the business-critical language, so what they’re offering is high stakes.

The idea started when Bill was called back to work after retiring, and it got them thinking as a couple about how many others in the industry who still understand this language are being called back as well.

It turns out, quite a bundle.

As they see it, the legendary language isn’t going away anytime soon.

On the show today, we talk about why.

We also talk about the importance of work-life balance, putting a hard pass on micromanagement strategies, and the beautiful art on their walls.

I wear my cactus earrings for the occasion.

Here’s our conversation.

Bill, Eileen, welcome to Money Isn’t Everything.

Thank you so much for being on the show today.

It’s our pleasure, and thanks for inviting us.

Oh, I have been fangirling you without you knowing, so I’ve been real creepy.

But I heard of your company years ago when I was reporting at American Banker, and I was like, I’ve got to talk to these people.

So, what a pleasure to be able to talk to you today.

Well, Mary, we’re so glad you reached out.

I loved it when your contact came through, and thanks for letting me lasso Bill in, because banking is where he really excels in this industry.

In finance, we love talking about it.

Okay, well, with that, let’s get right into it.

I live in Los Angeles, and I sort of feel like your firm is like a Hollywood movie because you’re connecting programmers who understand an older programming language, and it’s tied to the highest-stakes kind of transactions at banks.

I want to know the impetus for this company.

Bill, Eileen, either of you, what brought on this idea to start the Cobalt Cowboys?

You know, Mary, we almost feel like it was destined.

Bill, at one point, had, he’s had a couple of companies.

I’ll let him introduce himself and talk about himself some with that.

But in his most recent company before Cobalt Cowboys, he was actually called back to do some work and to do some COBOL work.

We started thinking about that.

We started thinking, you know, if Bill was called back, how many others in the industry are being called back as well?

We also started, Bill was laughing, he was talking with his IT brother and they were saying, well, they were talking about how COBOL was started in the late ’50s, early ’60s, and how long it’s lived on.

We talked about these guys are close to retirement, some are retiring, some of them are beyond and passing on, actually.

We just thought this might be a niche.

It might be an opportunity.

I will have to say, I’ve always worked with the people part of the industry in my career, HR, marketing, et cetera.

So I started doing some research on COBOL.

I was astounded.

I researched for about three months.

I think I drove Bill and his brother crazy, sending articles about mainframes, COBOL, how many billions of lines of COBOL are running in our world.

But anyway, with that, Bill said, “You know, I’m going to start a new company.”

They’re calling me back, and I said, “Well, I think I’m going to call you Cobalt Cowboys.”

Because we thought, if it’s happening with him, it will be happening with others.

There’s a definite need.

We had done our research.

He loved that name.

Of course, we office from North Texas.

We work remote.

Cobalt Cowboys just stuck.

For me, in my thinking, in my vision, I remembered the Space Cowboys movie.

Clint Eastwood, I think he produced, directed, acted in it, and they brought back the scientists, or they brought back the astronauts, to solve a modern-day problem.

I thought, that’s kind of what we’re going to be doing in the COBOL world.

So we’re so happy that we chose that name and we have this branding because our name tells a story.

It does tell a story, and there’s so much to unpack with what you just said.

It’s kind of a beautiful story, I would think, from an outsider’s perspective.

But Bill, I want to ask you, what did that feel like when you got called back to be the person who could take care of the problem?

Well, of course, it felt good.

Everybody wants to be loved, appreciated, especially loved and needed, but valued.

Let me back up a little bit.

My very first company I formed in 1976 called Paysetter Systems.

We built the very first library of banking applications.

Before that, banks wrote their own software.

We developed software that we could license in many, many banks.

That’s how I got involved in banking.

I’ve been involved in all of the applications, tellers, ATMs, ACH, well, deposits, credits, all the core stuff I’ve been involved in.

But my specialty is online.

I’ve been told I built the very first online ATM software back about 1970.

I don’t know if that’s true, but I’ll take credit for it.

Why not?

Why not?

But anyway, that’s how I got started in banking.

Then I sold my banking company to a company on the New York Stock Exchange.

That was back in 1983.

My company was around for about seven years before I sold it, had a complete line of banking software.

Then I retired for the first time.

But I got called back by people I had worked with and clients.

They said, “Can you come back and do one thing for me?”

One thing.

Thirty-five years later, I’m still a one-person company, still doing consulting work.

Then I got called back and, I get confused on dates sometimes.

I’ve been around so long.

Anyway, I got called back, and like Eileen said, I wanted to have a new company.

It also justified me raising my prices.

I’ll be honest about it.

It also gave us our first contract within Cobalt Cowboys.

We added a few more, going along really slow, very few consultants.

Then we were approached by a major magazine and we gave an interview.

That went worldwide within the first week.

We have been visited by 125 different countries.

Consultants started sending us their résumés without even asking.

We have never solicited one client or one résumé.

Wow.

Because I give Eileen the credit.

It’s the name Cobalt Cowboy that draws people into us.

Good job.

Yeah.

As of today, we have over 650 independent consultants.

About a third of those have banking on their résumés.

Some are still working for banks.

Of course, we have other industries, insurance, healthcare, government, so forth.

But we were very fortunate.

The timing was unbelievable.

Then what added to that timing was the COVID-19 issue came up.

One governor said it was the mainframe and COBOL problems.

We knew it wasn’t, and that was proved to be true, that it was not.

It was a front end.

But we did probably about 50 interviews just on COVID-19 through all the major magazines.

We were on PBS, The New York Times, you name it.

We got such name recognition without even trying to get name recognition.

Anyway, that’s about where we’re at right now.

I’m kind of curious.

You mentioned 600-plus programmers now.

Is that number increasing, decreasing?

It’s probably hard to tell, really, because you’re having all this brand awareness.

The number has slowed up a little bit.

But in addition to us providing software support for clients, we’re in a conversation with a company to provide our consultants to train and mentor the younger generations.

One of those is a large bank, which we cannot name.

But the industry is finally recognizing that COBOL is not going away.

The young people finally recognize that.

They know that they want to advance their career.

In addition to their modern software they all know really well, they’ve got a good college education and they can do a front end without almost blinking their eyes.

But to understand what the mainframe is doing in COBOL, that’s a whole different area.

You can learn the skills, but if you don’t learn the actual business rules, how do you process transactions?

They’re wanting to learn how to process transactions in addition to learning about all the skills of COBOL.

So it’s an exciting time for us because we never thought we would grow like this.

We never thought we would be part of the voice of the industry.

Never thought we would do that.

But luckily, and thanks to the one person above, it’s happened for us.

It really happened for us.

You know, Mary, this has been, for both of us, we can honestly say, one of the best rides of our life.

We feel like we’re walking in a vision.

We feel like what we’re doing is very important.

It’s a service.

It’s a responsibility.

We love our clients.

We love our consultants.

We love this business.

Bill and I, from the very start, because obviously we’re in our golden years, and we’re both entrepreneurs and we’re total opposites, but we committed to letting this company roll naturally.

We’ve had a lot of opportunities to grow our company, and it’s growing naturally.

We love it because we’re in a position where we’re able to manage.

We’re able to enjoy what we do.

We’re able to spend time together.

When we travel, we’re together.

When we work at home, we’re together.

Sometimes we say people who make tons of money, that’s their success.

We measure success a little differently.

I feel so good with what we have.

I feel that we’re successful with the balance we’ve created in our lives and with what we’re able to give to the world at this point in our lives.

I think they want to talk a little bit about COBOL banking, I believe.

We do.

Anyway, you don’t want to talk about cowboys, you want to talk about banking.

We both go hand in hand.

But I am curious about some of the stories you encounter.

We were trading emails before this recording, and you were showing me some of the size of the market, which is incredible.

I wrote this down because I wanted to make sure.

You had sent me that it’s reported there are over 800 billion lines of COBOL code still in use around the world.

Yeah.

About four or five years ago, everybody was reporting in articles there were 200 billion.

Since then, they’ve done an in-depth study around the world, and that’s up to 800 billion, with one to two billion lines of new COBOL added each year.

It’s unbelievable.

COBOL will not go away in my lifetime.

It has worked great in the past.

It works great today.

It will even work greater in the future because it interfaces with AI.

In fact, I do AI-type stuff.

I’m an advisor for an AI company.

Oh, interesting.

In COBOL.

In COBOL.

It’s to build an AI product, which is about to be released, for research of COBOL programs and educating the young people.

Oh.

I’m not a fan of GenAI for COBOL or software at this time.

How come?

Well, when you take a look at what happens, let’s say upper management says, “We have a new service or a new transaction.”

They meet, all the people get together.

But there’s one person missing at that table, and that’s AI.

He’s at the table.

So it’s up to the human intelligence to design all the specifications, and there’s a lot.

Then for them to be able to enter those into AI, and for AI to actually accept those design specifications, and then for AI to implement it, it’s a big deal.

For instance, if you enter a new transaction, what is the source of that transaction?

Where does it come from?

What are the fields in there?

What is the validation of those fields?

How do those fields compare to other fields in other files?

Based on the validation, you may reject the transaction.

So what do you do?

Put out a report?

Do you stop the run?

But let’s say it posts correctly.

It passes all of the validation.

Then what files do you post to?

Do you create a new file for this transaction?

Do you add fields to a new file, to an older file?

Then how do you report that?

Is that a new report?

Are you adding on to an existing report?

Then you’ve got GL involved.

How does general ledger get involved in this?

Then you also say, well, if it comes from the front end, I have to pass information back to the front end.

So there are a lot of decisions that GenAI has to make for a complex service.

You might be able to make an easy change, like change the size of a field or something, but to generate complex logic, new logic, we’re not there yet.

We’re not there.

But we will be.

Don’t get me wrong.

We will be there.

But today, we’re not there.

I think we’re well on our way.

Yeah.

But already today, you see AI as a way to help educate people on the language.

That’s really interesting.

Because you’re in the underbelly here, and you know how high-stakes it is if a bank couldn’t, let’s say, patch something up or whatever.

Does it scare you that there’s a lack of talent for a very important language?

Yeah, there’s a lack of talent.

That’s why we’re getting more involved in training.

In fact, IBM, I think they trained about 180,000 people over the years.

People are getting in.

A lot of the colleges are going back and reintroducing COBOL and mainframes into their curriculum.

People are finally recognizing, hey, this old, what I call legendary, not legacy, I call legendary software, is not going to go away.

Why should it go away?

It was written for business.

You take the word COBOL, the middle letter is a B for business.

You remove that letter B, what have you got left?

Cool.

C-O-O-L.

That’s okay.

Anyway, it’s not going to go away in my lifetime.

I don’t think it’ll ever go away because it’s English-based.

It’s business critical.

It’s a business-critical language.

Yeah.

Ahead of us recording, we were remembering a story we both read.

If you want to describe it, I think it’s a perfect anecdotal moment of how important this talent is at a bank.

Yeah.

Help me out, Mary.

Yes.

We were discussing it.

In New York City, a large bank, the bank’s security guard actually was assigned to pick up one of their senior programmers, architects, pick him up at his home, bring him to the bank’s vault, and help him set up for work every day.

As I understand it, he had COPD.

He was up in years.

He was attached to oxygen.

But that knowledge obviously was quite valuable and important to that bank.

I told Bill at that time, I said, “I hope they have someone there in the vault shadowing him and learning from him.”

That’s one of my visions for Cobalt Cowboys, to connect the generations.

How are we going to pass on the knowledge?

How are the younger generations going to get up to speed with some of this?

Because this very important software is going to need maintenance and support for, we believe, many years to come.

I think about Grace Hopper and her team.

I told Bill just a couple of days ago, I said, “You know, I really don’t think Grace Hopper would be one bit surprised that COBOL is still running and is robust.”

I think she would be thrilled with what’s happening today.

We talked about, let’s take a Ford Model T back in the day, and let’s take a look at the 2025 Mustang.

Look at the difference.

It’s the same brand.

It’s a car.

But look how much it’s been enhanced.

COBOL’s been enhanced that way.

It’s powerful.

COBOL is evergreen, like the mainframes are.

They’re always up to speed.

In fact, a lot of times they’re ahead of the modern languages.

They do things.

Let’s talk about modernization and AI and the cloud.

Okay.

There’s been a push on to move COBOL and the data to the cloud.

There was a similar push years ago to move it to a data center.

But it got pulled back out of the data center because the banks lost control of making changes.

They could no longer be competitive.

The bank up the street was doing something, but they couldn’t do it because the data center says, “Well, we can get to that in six months, a year.”

So anyway, it was pulled back.

What’s happening with the cloud is two things are starting to become obvious.

One is the cost savings may not be there.

Second, AI is requiring a lot of data, and it can’t get to it fast enough on the cloud.

So a lot of banks and other industries are bringing that data back from the cloud to the mainframe so the AI can get the data quickly off the mainframe.

There’s a lot of movement going on.

AI is also, as you know, used for modernization.

It can point out dead code that’s no longer used.

It can point out spaghetti code.

That type of code, which people laugh at or say is a problem, was caused not by COBOL.

Different people worked on the program over the years.

You have 10 or 12 people working on the same program at different times, and you have to make a change.

They don’t have time to go on and see, where’s the best place to put this?

So they add new code.

Now AI will say, “Whoa, there’s a better place. Let me help you with that.”

So AI will help COBOL, and any language.

They talk about COBOL being legacy.

Well, Java’s been out for 30 years.

It’s not called legacy.

I’m not sure why.

Are you curious about this?

Why do you think it got such, it’s not bad branding, but certainly the assumption that it’s going away.

Why do you think it had that brand problem?

Well, what we’re finding is some of the industry, and I’m just saying banking only, they are saying, “Let’s go back to the mainframe.”

The new stuff is great.

It’s really good for customer-facing transactions, like ATM or in front of your laptop.

It’s great for that.

The new modern languages, because they’ve got all beautiful screens.

But you have to pass the data to the back through APIs, application programming interfaces, to handshake with the back end and let the back end do the validation, let it do the posting, the reporting, and so forth.

People are going back to mainframes because they’re recognizing that it’s a business transaction system.

It can process over a million transactions per second on the mainframe.

You can’t get that on...

It’s reliable.

It’s secure.

Yeah.

We were approached by a congressman’s office out of Washington wanting to set grants to bring COBOL and mainframes back to the education system.

Why?

Security.

This was being pushed by the Department of Homeland Security.

The front end, they can get hacked.

I’m not saying that the mainframe can’t get hacked, or COBOL, but it’s less obvious to happen.

So what I’m kind of curious, you’re just making me think, do fintech companies try to reach out to you to be like, “Hey, I need to understand how to work with this bank in some way”?

Has that ever happened for the Cobalt Cowboys, of fintech startups?

No.

No, I have not.

Interesting.

We’re a low-key company.

We don’t have a sales force.

Why have a sales force when the media does it for you?

It’s a lot cheaper.

A sales guy can make two calls in a day, but you’re on media, you get millions of clients out there.

It’s silly.

There is a purpose for having a sales team, don’t get me wrong.

But from our perspective, it’s not necessary.

You’ve got the inbounds.

I just want to throw out, we rely heavily on our consultants.

They’re professionals.

They are entrepreneurs.

They are the star in our brand.

They are amazing.

What’s their average age or age range?

That’s a great question.

Well, when we first started, it was about in the late 50s, early 60s.

Most people have gotten older, of course.

But we’ve got younger people coming up.

That age has changed a little bit.

We focus on skill set and the industry.

I will say, at one point I went through and did a count because I wanted to know how many cowboys and how many cowgirls we have.

Working at that point, we had an exact 50-50 match, which I loved, because I thought, it’s 50-50 at the top and our consultants working, it’s 50-50.

But when you do a count on our résumés, on the consultants we have in our stable, it’s probably two-thirds cowboy and a third cowgirl.

We’re probably two-thirds U.S. and a third international.

We’ve been really fortunate.

Early on with Cobalt Cowboys, Bill got a call from Australia.

Well, it actually came through our contacts page.

It was urgent, SOS.

Bill was traveling for another client.

I called him and I said, “We’ve got an urgent SOS from Australia.”

I explained the situation.

He said, “Have them shoot you a photo of a screenshot.”

He said, “That sounds like a Y2K issue.”

This was in December of 2019, almost into 2020, and they were having some scheduling issues into 2020.

Sure enough, Bill was able to take care of that problem quickly.

We love that.

That was our first international connection.

Yeah.

What a beautiful thing to get, well, not to get an SOS, but to be able to help.

Talking about our consultants, our business model, which we give each of our consultants before they decide to join us or not, we’ve got some key points in there.

One, you work remote.

You may take a first trip just to get connected, but you work remote.

The big thing is, we do not micromanage.

If we have to micromanage you, we don’t want you on any of our engagements.

You are seniors.

You are professionals.

You’ve got at least anywhere from five to 10 or more years of experience.

You are entrepreneurs.

You are Cobalt Cowboys.

So please present yourself professionally as a Cobalt Cowboy.

We’ve only lost one consultant in all that time, and that was a young lady whose husband was diagnosed with cancer and she had to give 24/7 care.

Other than that, they stick with us because they love our business model.

I love our business model.

Also, Eileen pays them on the 15th of the following month.

We don’t wait for our clients to pay us.

Oh, that’s nice too.

We pay our consultants on the 15th of the month, and they love our business model.

We also say, if we don’t have an engagement for you, if you want to go out and get your own engagement outside of us, go for it.

We’re here to help them have a living after their career or during their career.

They can spend time with their family.

They can take vacations.

We do the things that I always wanted to do and have access to, but I never did.

It was very strict.

Part of our culture, Mary, is to reward the people in the industry who have helped build the IT industry.

Back in the day, these guys had to travel, be away from their families.

I bet.

For many, many years, that was the sacrifice.

So people are retiring, but people are finding they still need extra income.

And they want to keep their minds active.

They have knowledge to give.

It’s rewarding and makes them feel still valuable.

So that’s part of what we do too.

We want to reward the individuals who have helped build this industry.

Yeah, I think that’s beautiful.

I wrote a story a while back, it was broader than banking, but it was people who retired who reentered the workforce.

The motivations were not just money, but just to feel valued, to give back what you know, all the things that they’ve learned.

But Bill and Eileen, I know we’re coming on time.

There are at least two questions I have for you.

One is the segment, but Bill, you already spoiled it because you’ve said it on this episode too.

The segment’s called “That’s What You Said,” and I quote back something you said elsewhere.

But you’ve said it here too.

One thing that you said, I think it was on an NPR podcast, was, “Some people like to say that COBOL is going away soon, but it’s not going anywhere.”

I was going to ask you, is that still true?

But that’s true.

That’s true.

Yeah, that’s true.

What a lot of people don’t appreciate and don’t understand, because they weren’t there then, in the past, we would go into a bank and we would have to tell them what a computer was.

Work with the user department and actually develop code for their business rules.

Today’s younger generation are able to look at COBOL and know what the business rules are.

We didn’t know any of that stuff.

We were just young.

We were drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, working 24/7.

I’m surprised it worked.

But anyway, that’s the foundation of what’s in the code today.

It was built back in the 1960s, has been enhanced, enhanced, enhanced.

Machines are more powerful.

The COBOL, the biggest change for COBOL was the compiler.

It’s what makes everything run faster and more robust.

You can write the same or use the same program and run it back in the ’60s and run it today.

It’s like that Model T Eileen was referring to.

Back then it was a Model T.

Now it’s almost like a Ferrari.

But what’s common about things?

They both have four wheels.

They both have a steering wheel.

They both have an engine under the hood.

They both have a trunk in the back.

They’ve got doors.

When you look at them, it looks the same.

But boy, you pick up that hood, it’s totally different.

It’s like an airplane engine now under, as compared to a four-cycle riding mower or lawn mower.

That’s the type of motor it was back in the Model T.

It was very basic.

We love COBOL because it works.

Yeah.

And continues to work.

And continues.

It gets a bad, I probably shouldn’t say this on this, but I have put out postings that a lot of the issues today is that the young people come out of college, they don’t understand COBOL or the mainframes, which I understand.

They are not taught that.

But they want to come into a new organization and they say, “Oh, it’s COBOL. What’s that? It’s mainframe. What’s that? Let’s replace everything.”

Upper management is saying, “We don’t want to replace it. It works.”

So those people start getting angry because they can’t make a name for themselves.

What’s important is making a name for yourself and helping people.

We understand that too because I made a name for myself, so I understand all of that.

But that’s one of the problems today, is that a lot of industries or companies do not wish to replace COBOL.

Including banking.

So there’s a tension because it works.

Yeah.

It works.

Well, one last question, but if people want to reach out to you, they should go through your website?

What’s the best way to reach you?

We have a contact page on our website, and we really prefer that because then we’re able to see this is legitimate.

We have a name, an email address.

So it’s CobaltCowboys.com.

Yeah.

CobaltCowboys.com.

And we’ve just released, this is not our first rodeo, we’ve just released two magazine articles.

One is for our company and one is for individuals.

We are reaching out to the world to help them understand what COBOL is, why was it developed, what it does, and why it won’t go away.

Send me those links.

I can add it, I’ll add it to the show notes.

For the listeners, check out the podcast description and I’ll add links to the articles.

We sure will, Mary.

We really appreciate what you’re doing too.

I think it’s fantastic.

Well, it’s fun for me.

I was going to ask you, my last question is usually about the photo on your smartphone, but I know we were going to talk, well, maybe you didn’t know, but I have to ask you more about your wall art.

You mentioned your mother made it.

Tell us a little bit more.

Well, in closing, this has been fun for us because we’re never together on screen.

Yeah, we’re always separate.

Mary, in my very young years, I was a dancer.

My mother’s an artist.

So behind me, this is a photograph of a painting.

The original painting is still in South Pasadena, California.

This is a photo and I’ve put it on a canvas.

But it was a modern art assignment she had at one of the classes she took in Southern California.

I was a ballerina.

So she took one of my photos and she created the modern art.

My mother’s 88 now.

She’s strong.

She’s doing well.

She’s a cowgirl.

She loves technology.

She loves horses.

As a little girl, she had her own horse.

In my family, I was raised in a family with ranchers and educators.

But the cowboy thing is very real for me.

We love Cobalt Cowboys.

Yeah.

Thank you for your interest.

No, thanks for being on the show.

It’s been wonderful chatting with you today.

Also, we are moving more toward mentoring and training as a company.

Yeah.

We will always have the consultants to do the software, but we want them to go out and teach and train the younger people because that’s where the knowledge is.

We can’t lose that knowledge.

It’s like the Medal of Honor winners from World War II.

They come into Gainesville.

We support them.

They go out to our schools and teach the young kids what it was like during the war.

We’re trying to do the same thing.

Although it’s not a war, it’s learning.

The stakes are high.

The stakes are high.

We’re excited to develop that arm of Cobalt Cowboys.

We’re also doing something we can’t talk about with a major IT company, which we’re also pleased about.

We’ll help them, they’ll help us.

All right.

Well, good.

That’s a tease.

But you heard Bill.

If you’re looking to school up on your knowledge, this is a good company to reach out to.

Yeah.

If people have any questions about Cobalt Cowboys or COBOL or any modern language, we support all the languages, feel free to leave a contact on our contact page and we’ll get back to them.

We may even have a consultant in that area, knowledge of that area and expertise.

We want to educate the young people.

We really do.

That’s the life of COBOL and the mainframes going forward, education.

So that’s what we’re doing.

Thank you very much, Mary.

Thank you.

What I learned today, well, I learned a lot today.

But what I learned is a possibility, and that is AI can help a wider group of people understand this programming language by educating them about it.

Also, happy anniversary to Bill and Eileen this month.

Two weeks from now, we’re dropping my conversation with Elizabeth McCluskey, the managing director who runs the Discovery Fund at TruStage Ventures, which invests in early-stage fintech startups with diverse founders.

The conversation is even higher stakes as we explore DEI and banking during the Trump presidency.

See you then.