If you get a decent grinder and a few pounds of coffee to play with, you should be much of the way there within a weekend. Having spent a day with Heather Perry in a class of two, what I mostly learned was be willing to discard things. She discarded more coffee in that one day than I'd discarded in all the time I'd owned my espresso machine. It's one of the reasons I love my Monolith and single dosing. For her coffee is essentially free, for me it was precious which led to completely different attitudes in how we treated it. There is a lot of information here, at some level there's maybe better beginner information in the much older threads and the videos posted on the site.

Any way, don't be afraid to just play and certainly don't be afraid to fail. If not for COVID, I'd say invite a bunch of friends over and practice making coffee on them.

I would recommend a naked portafilter, 1gram scale, a clock that reads in seconds, something skinny to stir the grounds and a tamper that insures a level tamp. With those few things, figuring out what you're doing right and wrong should be reasonably easy.

Ira