There have been several of these type posts lately. I hesitate to respond but will try to offer some things I think would help.
1) If you can buy equipment on the halves in a partnership with a neighbor, it cuts your expenses and increases equipment budgets. You can do things like let him buy the disc and you buy the grain drill. Things like that. Sharing cost helps when you are getting started. Take good care of your equipment. If you borrow anything, take it back in better shape than what you borrowed it in.
2) Stay away from high dollar cattle. Go to a sale barn and see what cattle are worth. That is what your calves will be worth when you market them. Even if you have purebred, only about 10 to 20 % of the bulls are worthy of breeding stock. You need buyers for that small percentage and that takes some serious marketing skills. If you can get 20 steers together, you can find a buyer for them. It is hard to get someone to come out to a farm for 5 or 6 steers.
3) Try to market your stock to friends and family. If you can feed out the animals and sell them to friends for the freezer, you can get fair market prices. Otherwise it is the sale barn. This is a win win situation when you sell to friends. They get good beef cheaper than trash beef at the supermarket.
4) Have plenty of grass to support the cattle you attain. Too many folks rely on hay producers or feed stores. You go broke buying feed. If your grass can sustain your cattle year round, you are at a higher profit margin.
5) Learn all you can about taking care of cattle. They don't need much, but when they need help, they need it now. Don't rely on calling a vet at 2 a.m. It really helps if you can find an old cow hand around to help in dire situations. People call me thinking they are in dire circumstance and it is only a trivial problem that they don't know how to deal with. They could have come to this forum and found the solution.
6) Get yourself a good calving bull. If you get yourself a bull or AI from a bull that throws huge calves, you are in for problems. These problems occur at inopportune times. During rainstorms, or during your daughters wedding etc. 70 pound calves that grow well are good targets.
7) Go through every post in this forum that dun, Caustic Burno, msscamp and other gurus have posted. Even an old timer can learn an awful lot from others views.
8) When you don't understand something, ask. After you have read through this forum time and time again, you'll understand some of the terminology used here. It will help you ask the questions you need to be asking.
That's enough advice for now.
Forgot to mention my wife has a job that allows her to do 98% of the work from home, with full family benefits, doesn't take much time at all during the day, usually no more than an hour. It is a steady $35K a yr. plus whatever the cattle business grew to.
