Seeing how much BS is starting to go around the internet about “how automation is simple and easy to start - here, buy my course for $19.99 valued at $9,999.99” - I really appreciate your effort and hunger for knowledge 
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Here are a few words - more overall because I’m sure other people will have the same problems.
First of all, automation isn’t something new. AI isn’t something new. It’s just become trendy now because it’s become more available.
From my perspective, Make is just a tool. Awesome and giving huge possibilities - but only a tool which uses certain technologies. Like CNC machine- doesn’t matter if it is Felder or Biesse or cheap machine from Alibaba- you can learn it in few hours. But you won’t do anything if you don’t have skills how to process wood, which tools use, how to optimize paths and so on.
If you are a more technical person, it will be pretty easy to understand it at a basic level. The rest - as @Henk-Operative said - is experience. You can truly learn only from real use cases and experience. Only hours spent on problem-solving can give you the necessary knowledge.
What’s really important and hard to learn (personally, I would say almost impossible to learn in less than 3-4 years if you don’t have any IT experience) is understanding the IT environment. You must know APIs - HTTP, REST, SOAP. Understand basic file structures like CSV, XML, JSON.
You don’t have to be a programmer, but if you can read code and understand what’s going on, it will be a huge advantage.
Furthermore, without knowing how databases work, what the difference is between relational and non-relational databases, it will be really hard to build something more complex than scenarios available in templates.
This is only a starting point. Other important knowledge areas when beginning to build automations might include:
- Basic understanding of web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript)
- Familiarity with cloud platforms and services
- Knowledge of data security and privacy principles which are really important.
And those are only the technical skills which you can learn.
I know that some people will disagree, but personality is really important and this is almost impossible to learn.
You must be creative - as mentioned above:
Some things you have to learn by being inventive.
You must also be a problem-solver. As you can see even here- problem can occur even in well-tested modules or scenarios.
And have the skill to understand and visualize the process. From my experience, building a good scenario requires maybe 5% of your skills.
The rest is understanding what you have to build, how, and what tools to use to make it work reliably. I’ve seen a lot of projects which were thrown away and forgotten because employees didn’t want to use them. And dozens more ill-thought-out solutions which need constant attention. Not to mention those unscalable monsters solving problems right-here and right-now.
I think most people forget that “automation” is just one word from “business process automation”. Automation without processes is useless. And most businesses struggle with it.
Lastly, it’s worth noting that owning an agency requires business skills on top of all this technical knowledge.
My advice is to always consider if you really want to do it - or maybe go with the freelancer route or being a consultant instead. These paths can allow you to focus more on the technical aspects while minimizing the complexities of running a full-fledged business.
At the end of the day, fingers crossed and I wish you all the best in your automation journey!