A Business Lesson from Van Halen

I received the below story in my e-mail this week and it really made an impact. I have no idea if this story is true or not, but it makes you think about the "fine print" in our daily business. Sometimes it is the little things that do actually matter and make our business stand-out from the crowd. Enjoy!

Actionable Tip of the Week


Some of you may remember the stories of Van Halen’s (the rock group) backstage demands on their tours. The example that I recall was their insistence that they be provided with ample bowls of M&Ms. The only caveat to this was that they were not to include any brown ones in the mix. Until recently I thought that this was an example of quirky ‘rock star’ personalities and was really just a way of them re-enforcing their branding as being wacky and weird---hard rockers to the core. To reinforce this, it was usually it was some young lady telling me this fact, followed by a giggle.

Interesting enough, it turns out it was more an example of their astute business acumen than their wild and crazy life style.

“Part of Van Halen’s touring strategy was to perform in small, third-tier towns. That meant Van Halen had to truck in nine 18-wheeler loads of equipment, and set up staging that weighed a few tons. The band soon realized that promoters in small towns were treating the technical details of their concert contracts casually, putting the band at great risk. So, Van Halen hid a little rider in the middle of the contracts. It said that "all brown M&Ms had to be removed from the backstage area" or else the band would forfeit the show.

So, legend has it, that if Van Halen went backstage and saw brown M&Ms, it was a warning sign that the promoter hadn't read the entire contract, and the band would double-check all the staging to see what else the promoter missed. Inevitably, they would always find other omissions or errors. This, according to CBCradio.ca

How cool is that? My first response was to go back and listen to their music, which I had always been a little dismissive of. I figured that if they were that smart perhaps they were also great musicians, and that they deserved a second listen.

Regardless of whether or not you like their music, this is a great example of having well defined procedures and then being sure that everyone on your team sticks to them. Van Halen constructed the “M&M clause” as a simple way for them to monitor whether or not the procedure manual was being adhered to explicitly.