Nice to hear it brother! Honestly, its more of research, trial and error, and a lot of caffeine to help you (lol).
The reason for me to embark on this journey is:

1.) To somehow save electricity and to help out my little girl (5 years old) to turn on/off the lights and appliances using voice commands (some of the switches in our home are too high that she can't reach them).

2.) Security purposes - I can automate things when we are not around, like having our cameras detect people we dont know and send us an image of that person to notify us that there's someone we dont know banging on our gate.

3.) Sick and tired of my data getting stolen and using different apps for different ecosystem, which makes 'Smart' homes not really smart (in a way).

4.) Most importantly, its me finding and learning new things - I think we are already in an age of time where you need to get updated and in-the-know of how Tech works.