My work focus is pretty different from most people here, so I'm not the best one to give advice to your question. But it does create a lot of questions in my mind. What is the path to becoming a professional in some field? How do people become professional photographers (which is really what this is.) I bet everyone's path and story here is totally different, but I'm sure every story would also be totally fascinating.
For myself, in some small ways I could call myself a professional photographer now. Part of my day job involves collecting aerial survey images. I am doing this for engineering purposes (not artistic purposes.) Collecting and analyzing pictures is just part of the larger objectives for my day job. My path has been incremental over the span of 10+ years. My work has included building up our own airframes and our own flight controller hardware and software. I've also worked on my own image fitting/stitching software and image visualization tools. Some of that 'extra' work is because I wanted the satisfaction of doing things myself and learning what goes on under the hood. But some of that extra work has led to tools that are better optimized for my specific use cases.
So even for engineering/survey type photography, there is a lot to learn with respect to methodology, camera settings, post processing techniques, etc. This year finally I'm starting to feel pretty satisfied with my results ... like all this effort is finally starting to come together in a reliable and productive way.
My best advice is to take what you have and what you know; jump in and start doing. You can do some good work right away, but also expect a long term learning process. You don't instantly become a professional just from purchasing a fancy bit of gear. You learn over time what gear works best for your purposes (and sometimes that includes fancy gear.) Little by little you learn new tricks. For me, every time I go out and collect a new data set, I get thrown a new wrinkle and there is something new to learn or something new to account for next time I go out. You do your best with what you know right now, but always be learning. I don't feel like I know that much about anything. But I work at a university, and every year when new students come in, I see that I know way more than them. So something has happened over the years where I've learned a few things, and collected a few stories, and now find myself in a job that includes flying fixed wing uavs, multi-rotor uavs, collecting and processing survey images, collecting flight test data ... I'm living the dream ... at least until they figure out I don't really know that much about anything.