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Guys, I started getting into Warhammer 40k, and making an imperial guard army. I started painting a Cadian army theme and painting half of the squad I realized that i might want to experiment with a new paint theme. But I am afraid of losing a soldier(if not successful) or losing half of the painted squad(if successful). I know some might say, they are just a few guardsmen in an army, but they are my first models and I would like to not just lose money spent on a squad. So what would you guys say? Try painting? Or maybe remove the paint in case of failures? Any recommendations are welcome. Also some tips for a beginner painter.
Cheers.

Try it out. If it goes wrong there are products you can use to safely remove the paint.

Additionally, you can make them special units on transfer from a different brigade, or talent recruited from the local PDF or whatever you like

Also if any of you guys know what would a good grey color and then a good shader color(like ushabti one for zandri dust) for both the grey color and the black color, that would be very much apprreciated.
Thanks in advance

A couple of suggestions.

First, invest in a Philips sonicare toothbrush, one of the high frequency ones (they're about $50, on sale). With isopropyl alcohol, you can remove paint from just about anything cheaply and with minimal effort.

Second, get a couple of cheap (or free), blocky, single-piece METAL miniatures for testing color schemes. Reaper makes some, but you can get old (used) space marines and imperial guard for very little money, too. The advantage of a metal mini is that if you don't like the paint job, you can carve the paint out with impunity, for example, with acetone.

When you say "shader", if you mean, a way to highlight dark grey or black, think of the tone that you want the model to look. greys, blues, greens, and browns can all work to highlight up black. I quite like Dark Reaper + Fenrisian Grey, for a blue tinted highlight for black, for example.

You can strip models.... but for rank and file models where you have a ton of them as long as you don't slop the paint on too thick you should just be able to paint over them again without any real issue so I wouldn't waste my time stripping them.

It's only when paint gets thick enough to obscure details, and those Cadians have pretty chunky details to begin with, so just make sure you paint thin coats and when it comes to repaint them, just paint over the top IMO.

The only time I strip is when the model has a lot of fine detail that may have been obscured, when the underlying paint is so bad I don't have a choice (it was painted too thick or roughly) or when it's a model I intend to spend a lot of time painting (2+ hours) so it becomes worth stripping it.