Node Questions and Dependencies

I want to establish a private node that me and a couple of friends could have access to in order to speed up transactions, what are some resources that I could look into that would help me get started on learning how to do so? Also, speed is the key here, so what factors would transaction speed be reliant on and how would I avoid ETH network congestion? If you're into NFTs and know of JustCubes and their hypernode, I want to build something like that, but just for private access, not commercial. I'm a dumbass, so sorry if I broke any rules or sound stupid.

Edit: by node I mean validator node for staking.