The Faster Zebra Village

You don’t need to arrive with a business (or even a clear idea).

You only need to be willing to build a real one. Because as you build the business, the business builds you back.

The Village is a business school where you learn by building a real business of your own.

Start with no idea, one idea or too many. We’ll guide you through choosing what to build, turning it into an offer, pricing it and taking it to real customers, while you learn the nine languages every business runs on.

In your first ten-week season, you’ll have an offer, real customer responses and either your first sale or a clear next move. Across a year, you’ll have built and grown the business, understand how the whole business fits together, and developed the judgement and confidence to keep building it.

> Four seasons a year, ten weeks each.
> Four live calls a week, plus four short daily activities.
> One community, all levels of experience.

You were taught the craft

Nobody taught you the business.

You can do the work. You were never shown how to price it, sell it, or build a company around it. Almost nobody is.

A degree teaches you design, or marketing, or engineering, and then it stops. You come out able to do the thing and unable to answer the questions that decide whether you make a living from it. What do I charge. How do I find customers. What goes in a contract. Where is the money actually going. Is this business working or not.

The Village is built the other way round. You start a business, and you learn each part of business because your business needs it. You learn pricing in the week you have to set a price. You learn brand when you have to explain why someone should choose you over the cheaper option.

Being excellent at one thing gets you hired. Understanding how a business works gets you a say in it.

Your week

Four calls, four activities, and none of them take long.

Each activity takes 15 to 20 minutes. The hard thinking has already been done, so what's in front of you is one small task and a clear reason for doing it. You do the activity, you bring it to the call, you leave knowing your next move.

Everyone gets the same task four times a week and applies it to their own business, so no two people end the week in the same place. Come to the calls that help and watch the rest later. Live on Sydney time, recorded for everyone else.

The year

Four seasons. One business. Yours.

You work on the same business all year. Each ten-week season takes it a step further, and each one ends with something you can show.

You can join in any season. Each one is a complete piece of work, so there's no group to wait for and no backlog to catch up on. The seasons come round again each year, and you meet them with a bigger business than the time before.

Who runs it

Charbel has been starting businesses since 1988.

He grew his last business to $22 million and sold his stake for 7-figures.

He's built and run companies across design, technology, innovation and brand: a design and innovation agency, food and beverage, streetwear, publishing. In 2013 he founded Academy Xi, Australia's first short-form design and technology school, and helped over 8,000 people to move into industries they hadn't trained for.

He learned the nine languages through learning, experience and actively challenging the status quo, one business at a time. The wins and the expensive mistakes that came with each further refined his abilities. The Village is where he hands that over, live, every week, so you learn from lived, active and current experience.

How you get in.

1. Claim one of the 30 founding places.
2. Choose the Kit you want included.
3. It's posted to you, the room opens early, and season one, Bring it to life, starts on Monday 28 September 2026.