The wiki is a great place to start. Also, most of the services have pretty good documentation.
The biggest tip would be to start with Docker. I had originally started running the services directly in the VM, but quickly ran into problems with state getting corrupted somewhere. After enough headaches I switched to Docker. I then had to spend a lot of time remapping all of the files to get it working again. Knowing where the state lives on your filesystem and that the service will always restart from a known point is great. It also makes upgrades or swapping components a breeze.
Everyone has to start somewhere. Just take it slow and do be afraid to make mistakes. Good luck and have fun! 😀