If I was starting in the cattle business with limited resources (or unlimited, for that matter) I'd become a student of sell-buy marketing, aka Bud Williams marketing.  His stockmanship principles are definitely worth learning as well.  The biggest pitfall I would warn against is getting too much "stuff".  With the numbers you're talking about, overhead costs need to be next to nothing.  Rent from or trade labor with a neighbor who already has it.  Can't remember who it was, maybe Gordon Hazzard, said all you need to run cattle is a shovel and a wheelbarrow, but that's only if you're crazy about equipment.  I know of a 3000-cow outfit in Montana that owned one tractor and one squeeze chute...and they had two locations 20 miles apart.  Extreme, maybe. But extremely profitable too.  Their capital was invested in things that go up in value.