TBHNC Is Building the Business Infrastructure Behind Community Wealth

Sylvester Blackwell's view of economic opportunity was shaped long before he partnered with Sol Divyne, who is the creator of The Black Holistic and Natural Community (TBHNC). Raised in an underprivileged community where positive professional role models were scarce, Blackwell later served time for a crime he maintains he did not commit. The experience altered his understanding of how structural disadvantage can shape individual outcomes and eventually pushed him toward a more practical question: what infrastructure would help people build a different future?

His answer took more than a decade to develop. After his release, Blackwell established his first business and found a mentor in Glenn Schurr, who introduced him to the fundamentals of running a company. Blackwell recalls the experience as a turning point. "I had no clue about business at the same time," he recalls. "As he taught me a lot of things, that started the journey, and then I started looking at how money moves and how I could use that to help my community."

TBHNC emerged from that thinking. Blackwell positions the organization as a membership-led business ecosystem, with its immediate focus on a problem he believes receives insufficient attention in discussions about Black-owned businesses: the condition of the underlying business structure. "I find that systemic racism does exist," he states. "But more importantly, a lot of times that Black folk are denied things is not because of the systemic racism. Yes, it plays a part. But I find the biggest problem is most of them do not have the paperwork together."

The organization therefore starts with infrastructure rather than aspiration. Through a partnership with Wyoming LLC Attorney, TBHNC connects members with services covering business formation, registered-agent support, funding assistance, business banking, insurance, and corporate documentation. Blackwell's argument is straightforward: access to capital becomes more difficult when a company has not been properly established, and business growth becomes harder when the systems supporting it are incomplete.

The second component is market access. Blackwell says TBHNC's community reaches roughly 600,000 people across its various platforms, generating an estimated 90 million to 140 million views annually. Businesses that meet the organization's product standards can access that audience through membership, which Blackwell positions as an alternative to substantial advertising expenditure. "One thing I know about registered agent services, they offer you compliance, but they don't give you an audience in which to grow from," he explains.

The membership model is designed to work from the consumer side as well. Members can discover participating businesses and receive discounts on their products and services, creating a mechanism Blackwell believes can encourage repeat purchasing while directing more spending toward businesses within the network. TBHNC also routes customers directly to participating companies rather than taking an additional transaction fee, allowing those businesses to retain their sales revenue apart from standard processing costs.

Blackwell sees membership revenue as the financial foundation for a broader community investment strategy. Partnering with Sol Divyne, one proposed initiative, Divine Temple, would involve acquiring and rehabilitating properties to create lower-cost housing without relying on government rent subsidies. The partners envision transitional housing for people facing homelessness, with a period of stability allowing residents to secure employment and build savings before moving into longer-term arrangements.

The same model could eventually extend into transportation and agriculture. Blackwell has discussed partnerships with automobile manufacturers to provide temporary vehicle access to housing participants, while a planned agricultural initiative would give Black farmers and local producers physical marketplace space through which to reach members.

"Most people don't have a substantial amount of money to donate," Blackwell remarks. "If 300,000 individual people could commit a dollar every month, then that means every month we'd be able to extend the reach and help as many families as possible," he says.

Although TBHNC originally started on Facebook, the organization remains an expanding network, with its website, multiple digital platforms and a growing base of participating businesses forming the current foundation. Blackwell's stated aim is to build that infrastructure into a larger membership community capable of supporting both commercial activity and long-term reinvestment.

The organization is rooted in Black community development, but Blackwell stresses that its membership is not intended to exclude others. "It's for anybody and everybody who needs help, whether they're Black, white, purple, green, because everybody needs help and we're all human," he says. The distinction matters to his broader proposition: TBHNC is centred on a community he knows personally, while the economic model is designed to remain accessible to anyone who can benefit from it.