Running a tabletop RPG is relatively forgiving. Most things can be fixed on the fly. It's generally better for both you and your players if you dive into the situation and figure things out as you go, rather than trying to plan it all out. There's a relatively small number of things that you have to think about at the beginning of the game.
But, one thing that you do have to think about is the tone of the game and the PCs' place in the world. Knowing how powerful a level 1 character is, relative to the ordinary inhabitants of the world, is one of the most important world-building decisions you can make, and it matters for role-playing from the very beginning.
Do you want your level one characters to swagger around like they own the place, getting treated like powerful heroes from the first game session, or do you want them to start off scared and paranoid, knowing that they have to spend several levels of grueling effort to earn their place in the world? Either of those is a legitimate approach, as is anything in between, but you need to choose one. Make a decision, and communicate that decision very clearly.
NPC level determines tone
The rules of the game can support either play style and tone; it all depends on how tough the random NPCs are. For example, consider this scenario:
A female level 2 cleric is in a rural town buying supplies in the market. Two ugly and dirty men, their faces twisted by barely repressed greed and lust, walk up to her and try to start a conversation. What does she do?
If these two men have the stat blocks of commoners, she has absolutely nothing to fear, even if they have concealed weapons. She can do and say whatever she wants. If they try to start a fight, it'll be like one of those anime where the heroine effortlessly and humorously thrashes a couple of creeps to show how badass she is.
If these two men have the stat blocks of bandits, it's a tense but manageable situation. She must be on her guard, and can't let them get a surprise round, and is probably going to have to use a spell slot or two, but unless the dice go badly they won't overpower her. She should talk with them carefully, looking around to see if they have hidden allies in the crowd, and potentially looking for an escape route.
If these two men have the stat blocks of toughs, then she has no hope in a solo fight. She can only rely on bluffing or running or calling for help.
In real life, ordinary women learn from an early age that they constantly have to calculate the relative power and threat of every man they meet, and they usually get pretty good at it. An adventuring hero would be even more experienced at this. So she should be able to look at them and know their stat block. You as the GM should tell the player your best guess as to how hard a combat encounter would be if it turned into a fight.
If they've made an effort to appear tougher than they are, then maybe they get an Intimidate check opposed by her passive insight, to appear like their stat block is of a tougher enemy. If you do this, you must explain to your characters in session zero that this is a thing that can happen.
Tell players NPC level in session zero
In addition to openly explaining the relative power of characters whenever a potential combat situation arises, you should also explain it in session zero. Look at that situation above. Basic decisions about how the party should conduct itself in a town, and whether or not they need to do their ordinary supply shopping in groups with their weapons ready, depend on this fact of the world. A world where the random creeps often have the stat blocks of toughs is a very different world, with a very different tone, requiring very different kinds of role-playing, then a world where all of the random creeps have the stat blocks of commoners.
Especially when introducing new players to the game, you should spend a lot of time explicitly telling them the relative power and social position of their character. They need to know what genre they are in, and if they guess wrong it can really mess things up. The line I like to use is something like "You are a hero, but not a superhero. You have powers, but not superpowers. You can take almost any civilian in a fight, but you cannot take on the town guard or a bar full of criminals without help." (Of course, once they hit level 5, they become a walking WMD and this changes, and you should explicitly tell them so.)
Give the level of every encounter
One of the biggest problems with the modern way of doing tabletop RPGs is that they train players to think that every combat is going to be fair and balanced. In the old days, players understood that it was their responsibility to pick and choose their battles wisely, but modern players have been trained to expect a narrative where they will defeat whatever shows up.
If you want to actually give players agency, and run a sandbox game rather than a linear narrative, then the players are going to have a choice of where to go and who to fight. Unless you're very lucky, you're gaming group probably will not understand the monster manual and game mechanics well enough to know what they can handle and what they can't.
Video games solve this problem by simply displaying the level of the adversary, with a color-coded indicator of how difficult they will be. In this situation, you should follow the example of video games and just tell the players how difficult an encounter would be if they fought. And you have to explicitly use a number. RPG forums often have stories of GMs trying to use words to explain how awful and terrifying a higher-level monster or encounter is, and the players ignoring that completely and rolling initiative instead of running.
"Sure, we can take all these guys at once. We just hit level 5!"
This is actually more realistic than making them guess. The characters have spent their lives learning facts about the world. At a very early age, their caregivers told them about all the local monsters: how tough they are, how they act, and how to tell the difference between them. And when they start adventuring they will learn much more. When they go to a new area, assume that they are talking to people and picking up basic knowledge. The math is a quick shorthand for a lot of knowledge about the world that any competent person would know.
It's also good to use levels and stat blocks when talking about a noncombat situation. When the characters enter a town, just tell them the relative proportion of various NPC stat blocks that they see in the marketplace. In a peaceful civilized place, tell them that it's all CR 0 commoners, with maybe a couple people that look like they'd have the stat blocks of CR 1/8 bandits. In a rough frontier area, you might instead tell them that basically every guy in town has the stat block of a bandit, with many of them being CR 1/2 scouts or toughs, and maybe 5% of the people (and a much larger percentage of the ones that might cause trouble) having the stat blocks of CR 2 bandit captains.
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