You will cheer her also.

I spent four years as a historian in residence at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama.

A woman on our street made the most delicious chicken salad you've ever tasted. I'd never really given chicken salad much thought until I tried hers. She started selling it to her neighbors, and all of us were addicted to it -- including a couple of my colleagues at the Mises Institute.

And then one day, it all went away.

No more chicken salad.

We didn't know what to do. We needed this chicken salad.

Here's what had happened:

Evidently a brick-and-mortar competitor had complained to the local government that our neighbor was selling food out of her home even though she didn't have an industrial-size oven and whatever other hurdles she was supposed to jump over.

Stacy decided: I'd been meaning to open my own restaurant anyway, and this just lit a fire under me.

So she opened Chicken Salad Chick, and before long the whole town was crazy about her chicken salad.

Inside every one of the nearly 300 Chicken Salad Chick locations you'll find a sign telling her story, and the Mises Institute and our efforts to publicize her case are specifically mentioned.

And by the way -- yes, she went from the one restaurant in Auburn, to one restaurant plus a takeout-only location in Auburn, to nearly 300 locations in 20 states.

That's great for her, but it's also good for you.

Not that you necessarily need to open a Chicken Salad Chick franchise, but it should certainly give you ideas: here's a woman who had an absolutely winning idea, the kind of idea that (let's face it) you and I probably wouldn't have come up with, but you can reap many of the benefits of her idea by starting a franchise.

Even though her chicken salad is addictive, I don't like restaurants as a franchise idea. Profit margins are too thin. But franchising does take a lot of the guesswork and trial and error out of starting a business, that's for sure.

A friend of mine from the libertarian world has created a network in which he connects people who are interested in perhaps owning a franchise business with franchise opportunities that meet their goals and expectations.

It all starts with their franchising guide that covers what to look for, pitfalls to avoid, and the basics you need to know. Get your free copy:

https://www.tomwoods.com/franchise

Tom Woods