Have you got experience self hosting other things?

I really think that it's good to start with something small and personal (say, a wiki or Jellyfin) where you can build some skills around hosting, reverse proxies, security practices, backups, etc.

Hosting a service as part of a wider interconnected network of sites isn't as difficult as it sounds but there is definitely potential to screw it up beyond repair.

https://matrix.to/#/#piefed-community:matrix.org

!piefed_help@piefed.social is probably the first place to look at