I've had chronic tendinitis pain since 2015. I've been making my own cannabis pain balm since 2016 that works better than the junk in the dispensaries. My friends tell me that it works real good and some people have seen overnight results for some of their pain. I've sold it "underground" to friends and clients for cash under the table (I'm a certified massage therapist and offer the product.). I developed it with my knowledge of different oils, the skin, and absorption rates. It's nice and smooth, soft enough to work with but hard enough to stay in the container. It dries fast and doesn't leave the skin too greasy and gross feeling. I'm in California. I'd like to start selling this to dispensaries and on the side. Once I get going I'm probably going to want to expand my product line to more than just 1 product. Right now, I have a product, a brand name, and a logo. I make it out of my house. I don't really know anything about business or economics and I definitely don't know anything about going to City Hall and doing all this legal stuff.
You'll want to research what it takes to get a business license in your city/county. You should be able to find this on your cities web site. You can also apply for a EIN (super easy to get), but you don't have to. You will just use your social security number as the business identification. I guess to keep it simple, start with your business license and where you get that information (should be easily accessible online) will have a ton more information to follow. I don't think you'll ever have to go into a city hall. When I got my license, it was all just paperwork mailed in, emailed/faxed in.
I know in MI there are some pretty expensive fees and shit just for growing to sell. Min aa year is a 60k dollar license just to grow. Then there is all the lab fees, some have told me its as high as 1000 bucks per sample. Then the transport fees and permits, housing fees. Employee pay and fees, shit by the time your said and done you better have about 250k to 500k in assets just to back a grow in this area. And said and done you have the state taxes and another 10% added from the state. Stand alone we pay 16% tax just to the state, a unknown amount to the city and who knows what in legal fees. And this is all just to grow rec flower for sales to dispenser. And people wonder why they pay 65 bucks plus taxes on a eighth oz.
its a very difficult answer to make as medical cannabis now has its 'own' laws, in relation to everything at most contamination and dispensing/ weed into vector(pills/balms/ food you may consider whipping up a large batch and then having a friend act as an agent in some 'legal;' easy weed place ...say colorado ..? then importing it back again to cali much the same as er Europe ...lol