Just when you think we have exhausted everything there is to drinking coffee, someone comes up with Dutch Bros. It’s small. It’s quick. It’s not Starbucks. It’s Dutch Bros. How does this small shack-of-a- business go on to gross more than $46m in revenue?  It’s the magic of solving the next problem. A problem created by Starbucks when they designed their famed “home away from home”, the legendary “second place”. Dutch Bros. realized that some people just needed coffee, period. Armed with that revelation, two brothers, Travis and Dane, humble dairy farmers from Grants Pass Oregon, did something Starbucks did not do.  In February 1992, they created a temporary structure (push cart) and set up shop in downtown Grants Pass. From that structure they began to sell the fastest-served coffee in the United States. It was all about speed. Over the next few years, permanent kiosks opened in other parts of the city, including a coffeehouse a few blocks from the original stand. In 2009 the company served 23 million cups of coffee, with gross sales of $46 million. Today Dutch Bros. is the largest privately-held drive-thru coffee company in the U.S.  All this from a simple idea: Serve coffee fast. Dutch Bros. operates from drive-thru and walk up structures which are approximately 400 square feet (37 m²). That’s one small shop; a small shop with a much focused commitment: Serve Coffee Fast.

How did Dutch Bros. make money? By solving the problem raised and created by Starbucks. First of all, Starbucks got us addicted to coffee (that’s my personal story). But Starbucks was not turning our coffees as fast as we wanted it turned. So after Starbucks had paid millions of dollars to get us addicted, Dutch Bros. got us faster.  Do we now need a new business model to get us sprinting?  May be. What I am getting at here is that you can make money, lots of money, by paying attention to small things, building business models based on push carts and by just turning the speed dial on the coffee maker.

Here are five ways to identify the next problem that could make you money solving it:

• Listen to people’s complaints

Don’t just complain that people are complaining. Instead find out if there are products that could be developed to solve this problem people are complaining about. Of course, if it’s just one guy complaining all the time, there is no business model there. The guy is just a whiner.

• Watch the do-it-yourselfers

Pay attention to what people are doing to modify a product they just purchased from the shop. Look at that guy next door adding a solar panel to his truck. There could be a business model there. Of course if the truck burns up there’s probably no business idea in his invention.

• Listen to price complaints

Have you ever heard someone complain that they love such and such a product but the price is too high? Chances are they are either miserable misers who never spend a nickel, or the product is really too expensive for the purpose it serves. Create a cheaper product that serves the same purpose and don’t sell it to misers. They will still complain about the price.

• Travel a little

Traveling opens our eyes to things we never knew existed. We find people solving the same problem with different techniques. People in Africa digging with hoes instead of tractors (I don’t think you will make money in America selling hoes), and so forth. Lots of ideas have been imported (or stolen) from other countries and then modified to suit our problems.

• Find out what everyone else is doing and don’t do it.

You have probably heard of “me too” people- people who try to copy other people’s brilliant ideas. Unless you are as good a “me too” as Facebook, don’t try to take on Myspace. Find something else to do- something that other people are not doing. Or something that compliments what other people are doing (and by complimenting I don’t mean renaming “Linkedin” as “Branchout”). I mean pure creativity, pure complimentary creativity.

Find the next problem and make money solving it.