A few days ago, sitting with a good friend and fellow entrepreneur, he told me he'd recently walked out of a restaurant before ordering because he could already tell the experience would be awful. The moment he walked in, he heard shouting from the kitchen — a heated argument loud enough to hear things hitting the floor. When he sat down, it didn't get better: the glasses and cutlery were dirty. His instinct was clear: if the basics are this neglected, what's the food going to be like?

It reminded me of a story about the rock band Van Halen, one that even gave its name to a contractual clause: the Van Halen clause.

The Van Halen clause was born from a real incident that lead singer David Lee Roth describes in his memoirs: during a tour, a stage collapsed because the promoter hadn't read the technical requirements in the contract. From that moment on, the band added what seemed like an absurd demand — a bowl of M&M candies in the dressing room, but with all the brown ones removed. It wasn't a whim. It was a test. If the M&Ms were wrong, they'd inspect the entire stage in detail. If they were right, the promoter had read the contract and they could relax. The M&Ms were the dirty glass.

Details are not decoration. They are evidence.

That's why, whenever I meet a prospective client, I arrive with a signed confidentiality agreement — printed on good paper, in full colour. Most of the time they tell me it wasn't necessary. But they always take it. It's a signal of how seriously I take their business and the challenges ahead.

So what are your M&Ms? Do you have dirty glasses? Which details are sending the right message — or the wrong one — before you even open your mouth?

© Oriol López Villena 2026

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