You will need NodeJS and YARN installed in your machine, if you're ready to start just install dependencies with:
yarn
To init a new hardhat network you'll need to run:
yarn network
With this command a new hardhat.json file will be created, a new mnemonic will be created (don't use default one in any case) and a new hardhat network will run. Leave this terminal opened and open a new one.
To deploy the contract simply run:
yarn task deploy hardhat
With this command we're saying the scripts/_task.js to run the scripts/deploy.js file using configs/hardhat.json file.
As you can easily understand you're now able to write your own scripts (or tests) and use it like:
yarn task myscript hardhat
or you can change the hardhat with rinkeby (for instance) and deploy to Rinkeby network. Of course you will need to setup your own provider inside the configs/rinkeby.json file adding an Alchemy, Infura or whatsoever provider.