From Fairways to a Founder

A Charitable Drive with Brian Floriani
Randy Crabtree hosts Brian Floriani on a special Episode 195 of The Unique CPA. The founder of Bernie’s Book Bank, Brian shares his moving story behind how he founded the organization in memory of his father, with the goal of addressing educational inequity through book ownership. Brian discusses the significant impact of providing books to under-resourced communities and reveals that a small increase in literacy could dramatically boost the economy. He highlights the organization’s achievements in Chicagoland, their expansion plans, and their commitment to efficient and sustainable operations.
Today our guest is Brian Floriani. Brian is actually the founder of an organization called Bernie’s Book Bank, a great organization that I was able to hear about recently at an event with a bunch of entrepreneurs in my hometown of Arlington Heights. Brian presented, told us the origin story of Bernie’s books, told us the impact and what they’re looking to accomplish and the future goals, and I was just super, super motivated and excited to hear what was going on there. So before we get into it, Brian, welcome to The Unique CPA.
Thanks for having me.
Did you ever think you’d be on a CPA podcast?
I was just—that’s so funny you just brought that up, because I was just thinking to myself back to my one accounting class in high school thinking, I couldn’t get straight the difference between a debit and a credit, and I’m still not sure I know the difference, but I do know what top line means and I think I’m a top line guy. So that’s about the extent of it, but it is pretty ironic for a recovering golf professional with an entomology degree to be asked to speak about anything. So, I’m grateful for the opportunity!
Yeah, no, no, that was great. I appreciate it. Really, it was impressive when I got to hear you speak. I don’t know, what was it? I think it was in March, maybe? And so, in that group, you came out and you talked about the origin story of Bernie’s Book Bank and, you know, where the passion for this came from and how the idea came. And so, I don’t know, I’ll just let you run with how this came about and anywhere you want to go from there: the impact, what you’re doing, what you’re looking to accomplish, the future, you just run with it.
Yeah, I mean, I think, again, thanks for having me, and I think the bottom line is for me, it was really what my life was going to be about. Was it going to be about chasing success, or was it going to be about being significant? And coming up on 20 years, my father, Bernie, and my grandmother, who I was very close with, died on the same day. And at the time, I was a golf professional and running golf schools for Golf Digest. Spent half a year in Lake Tahoe and the other half in West Palm Beach, and flew around on private jets with my clients, and life was pretty good. I mean, I loved what I did. I was pretty good at it. I was living in great areas. It was pretty simple, to be honest with you.
But on that same day, everything changed because I was asked to eulogize my father and my grandmother on the same day, separate services. They’re buried about a hundred yards apart. So imagine, you know, driving up to the cemetery and you look up the hill and there’s a hole about a hundred yards up the hill, and then right there at your feet’s another hole and you put your dad in the ground and you cover them up and you come down and do the same thing for your grandmother, you know. And then the dust settles and everybody goes home and you’re still left with this pain.
And what I was really reflecting on was eulogies themselves, you know, that they’re really not focused on the person’s success at all—success being defined as your accomplishments, significance being defined as others’ accomplishments. And, you know, my grandmother and my dad were pretty significant people, not just in my life, but in their communities and the people that they called friends and even people they didn’t know. And it made me ask myself three questions. If I were to die today, would anybody have anything to say about me? Would it be true? And would it matter? And no matter how I spun those answers, I did not like the answers to those questions, and from there, there’s a pretty deep spiritual dive, and out of that, I just wanted to be a servant. I just wanted to serve others.
And so, left the golf business, and the first iteration of what I was going to do was to be an elementary school teacher in an under-resourced community, so I moved back to Chicagoland, I took a reading paraprofessional job in Zion School District at an elementary school called Shiloh Park Elementary, and what it means to be a reading paraprofessional basically is if you, if you’ve got a college degree, check, and you’re willing to make nine bucks an hour, check, you’re in. And I can tell you that it was one of the most joyful times of my life, one of the most transformational, one of the most impactful times of my life, but it was also a period that was very frustrating, very confusing. I felt many emotions, one being shame. There were many others because here I was, working with these children and, you know, thinking that we’re living in a country that we talk about pursuit of happiness and equity and equality, and it was glaringly obvious from the outside coming in now, being an adult, looking at this educational system, that the educational inequity in our country is unacceptable.
You can have an emotional conversation about it, where I think we all, for the most part, agree that everybody should have a chance to pursue happiness. You can also look at it from a practical perspective, and you’re an accountant, so I’ll put it in your terms: If we were to move the literacy needle by 1 percent in America, it would have a $480 billion impact on the economy.
That’s a big number.
So you might not care about children, literacy, reading, or books. That’s fine. We can talk about that issue some other time. But if you were somebody that did not care about that, you do care about your country, you do care about your children’s children, and I also think you care about the balance sheet of America, you know, and not to talk about people necessarily as assets or liabilities, but let’s just be real: I think we have plenty of liabilities, and I think that actually we have the opportunity to turn those liabilities into tremendous assets. I think that, you know, we’ve accomplished some amazing things in our country, but we’re doing it with basically one arm tied behind our back because we’re not nurturing all brains in an equitable way. And so, you know, we’ve gotten to the moon, we’ve created the iPhone, you know, we’ve done all these amazing things, but just imagine if we were to nurture all brains, all hundred percent of them, what kind of advances we’d make?
You know, my brother Bernie, he was Little Bernie. My brother Bernie Jr. died of ALS three years ago, and it pains me to think that the cure for ALS or cancer or anything else is lying dormant on the south side of Chicago, the north side of Milwaukee, the east side of Pittsburgh, wherever it may be. And so, the case for literacy, it is the number one thing. If you want to solve the rest of our problems: homelessness, poverty, hunger, go down the line, you have to start with the cause. And in any of those things, you’re going to find somewhere in there, lack of literacy, lack of education, or both. And, yes, my job is to help get Bernie’s Book Bank to grow and help advance literacy, but also I’m on a quest for us to do something different in this country when it comes to education and to make literacy and education a key performance indicator when we talk about our country.
Yeah, I think that’s so important. And that’s just mind-blowing. The 1%, move the needle, 1%. We’re talking four, I mean, you know how many zeros that is? 480 billion?
That’s a few zeros and a couple of commas, maybe three, four. I don’t know how many commas are in a billion, but I’ve done a pretty good job speaking in your language so far, I think.
I was going to commend you. I heard liabilities and assets and all this.
Balance sheet, I threw a balance sheet in there.
This is pretty awesome. Look at you. You were born for this.
Yeah, I should be an accountant.
Well, you know what, that’s one of the things—and we’ll get to that, but I’m going to say this now—but that’s one of the things, so you just said it, if we can educate, if we have the cure for cancer sitting in some, you know, I saw you use the term, but you know, underserved, that wasn’t the term used. Under what?
Under-resourced.
Under-resourced community, so if we have somebody in our under-resourced community right now that has that, the cure for Alzheimer’s, for whatever, and they just don’t have that opportunity to release their brain power out on that. And, to a smaller extent, when you compare it to that, this doesn’t look all that important, but we’ve been looking at the accounting profession and just saying—and it is an important profession, and we are understaffed right now, and without the accounting profession, our country is actually in a world of hurt. We’re an important aspect to the country and without that—and we’ve talked about in the past, how do we get people into the profession? How do we get people excited in college? Well, when you started talking and I heard you talk, it was more about, okay, it’s not even a college thing. It’s how do we get that one-year-old child, that newborn child to book so that they can grow up with the opportunities that all of us take for granted, and if we can start educating people and giving these under-resourced communities opportunities at that level, I thought, you know what, we don’t have to have this discussion anymore of why we’re having an under-serviced profession.
And so I got ahead of myself there, but it felt like a good time to throw it in there. But let’s go back to, because that’s I think, so important. So from my standpoint, why I got so excited was because of that. Because the answer is there. I just never saw the answer before. The answer is there in education. You’ve already said it. So let’s go a little bit more into how you’re impacting that now. What is specifically Bernie’s Books doing?
Yeah, so, in my experience in the schools, you know, I obviously learned from a whole different perspective all the challenges that schools have, specifically in under-resourced communities, but what I really started to understand is how critical literacy really is. You know, when you’re five or six years old, you’re not gonna remember this, but it’s not like you learn how to read and look to your buddies and be like, “Oh my gosh, fellas, our life just completely changed. And if we did not have this skill, we’re in a world of hurt.” No, you just go on to the next thing.
But when you enter back into the school system now with a different perspective, an adult’s perspective, you really start to fully understand just how critical it is. And so through that time, I’m learning the different variables that make up the literacy equation, and I’m going to overgeneralize just a bit, but I would put them into two buckets: One, variables we can’t control for—where you’re born, who you’re born to, educational level of your parents—we can never control for that. But variables like book ownership, which has been proven over and over again by tons of incredible research, how critical book ownership is—and I’m talking about in-home libraries—to reading readiness and reading proficiency is absolutely critical.
And then what I saw firsthand were children who, by the way, were willing participants, and they were so excited to be reading and wanted to go home and read. And we were telling them to go home and read. But we knew, Randy, there were no books in the house. We knew that nobody was taking them to the library, it doesn’t matter why. Even in the school where I was, we had a library. But you could check books out from the library, but you couldn’t take them home, because if they didn’t come back, they just couldn’t afford that. And so here was, apparently, the solution in 21st century America: Teachers lined up at a copying machine, copying off pages of a book, stapling it together, giving it to children, and expecting that to inspire children to read.
And I reflected on my life and growing up in a home with books, I reflected on my children’s life, my children had books like many others before they were even born, and of course, I did research around the country around other models trying to get books in the hands of children, but none of them satisfied four words for me, and that was “effective, efficient, scalable, and sustainable.” And so, in December 2009, the bestest time in history to start a non-profit, you’re an accountant so you’ll laugh at that joke.
We know, yep.
We started Bernie’s Book Bank on my credit card for $5,000. And the objective was very clear from the beginning. We were going to build an ultra-effective, metropolitan-based children’s book bank model that was effective, efficient, scalable, and sustainable, and one that could be replicated in every major city in the country, where we were needed, which unfortunately is every one, and where we were welcomed. And so, we’re now 15 years old, we now serve 315,000 Chicagoland children with 8 quality books a year from birth through 6th grade.
Wow.
We work out of 65,000 square feet, where we host 50,000 visitors a year of all ages and abilities, 6,000 volunteer hours a month, more than half of those are given by people under the age of 14, which leads us to believe we’re serving two populations, not one: We’re serving the children we serve, and then we’ve created a high impact, safe place for young people to make service a habit from a young age, and also build perspective for them. And to bring it all home, and you’ll relate to this as an accountant, we do it all for $1.50 a book all in, that’s all in. And I think you’d agree, Randy, that you’d be hard-pressed to find a book at a garage sale for $1.50, let alone move it. So we’re excited about that, but we’re just getting started. We’ve now launched in Milwaukee, we’ve got the Suncoast of Florida in our sights as location number 3, and we’re just at a really exciting time where we’ve created a model, we understand that replicating it’s a whole different story, and we’re gonna learn a lot over the next 2-3 years. But we want the ball, and we want the ball when it comes to book ownership. We want to solve the problem, and we’re going to solve the problem.
So let’s go over those numbers again. Right now, currently, just in the Chicago area, what, 230,000, what did you say, the number of children that are being impacted?
315,000.
315,000. And those 315,000 kids are each receiving 8 books a year.
Yes, sir.
And that’s a cost on your end of $1.50. That’s like nothing. You know, you know how much we should be able to raise just by people listening to this podcast and how many lives that can affect? That’s amazing.
Wel, let me put it in perspective for you. To serve all of Chicagoland, which would be over 400,000 children, and which, one thing we undersell is a center where people can come and build community together and serve together, it would take about $5 million a year, all in. There’s not many organizations smiling at 450,000 children for $5 million a year, you know? And you’re right, that should not be hard, especially when the stakes are so high. But, you know, we all have a lot of choices with our dollars, and I’ve worked in the philanthropic space long enough to know there’s a million choices you have with your dollar bill, and when people now, our budget now is $4.2 million a year, I’ll never take that for granted. And when people give us a dollar, it’s an opportunity, it’s a responsibility, it’s an honor, and we take it super seriously.
But on top of that, what makes it even more complicated is that we’re running a business where your productivity is not directly related to your revenue. Now, my first piece of advice is don’t run a business like that, but that’s what charity is. We have no visibility, no predictability into the future. And that’s why relationships, including ours, Randy, is so really important because without relationships, you don’t have reliability. And without reliability, you can’t predict, you can’t budget, and you can’t make promises to children that are relying on you to come back year over year. So it’s a challenge, but it’s one I think I was born for.
I get that impression!
So anytime I get to speak to one person or however many people listen to this is an incredible opportunity and I’m really grateful for it.
So we already heard you’re looking forward to Milwaukee’s kicking off now. Suncoast of—I won’t be cynical and say, is that because you want to go golf there? Or I’ll leave that out of the conversation.
Well, I’ll answer that actually. One, golf has been an incredible tool for Bernie’s Book Bank because you don’t get five hour cups of coffee with people—I’ve tried. It gets a little awkward after like an hour and 45 minutes. But the other, the way that this happened is we had a couple of big supporters from Chicago re-establish residency down there.
Yep, that’s common.
And they’re the exact kind of people you want in an organization like ours. They can’t stop talking about us.
Yeah, that’s great.
In talking about us, they had a ton of people lean in, in a very organic way, that want to see the same thing that we’ve done here happened on the Suncoast of Florida, which is our service area will be North Tampa down to Naples. But the way we look at it is, if we can do this in Chicagoland, starting out of the greatest financial collapse of our time, thriving, which might be a little bit of an overstatement, but we did way more than survive COVID, we’re a jockey you can bet on. We can’t wait to keep running, and we will.
So what is the, is that the, as far as we’re looking in the future now, or is there, I mean, I assume overall picture is, hey, we want the entire country.
Well, remember you’re talking to the founder. Yeah, it is the company line. And the company line is, we set out from the beginning to create a model that we’d replicate in every major city in the country. And that’s what we plan to do.
Yep, and what were the four again? Effective, Efficient, Scalable, and I forgot the last one.
Sustainable.
Sustainable, okay. So that, I mean, just off the bat, having that on your mindset of this is how we want to do this, and if you live those things every time you make a decision, obviously, that’s gonna have a huge impact. Let’s talk a little bit about the impact that now, I mean, we know the number of kids, we know who you’re serving right now, but how do we quantify what that has meant? I mean, can you, do you have success stories? How do we look at what the overall positive impact has been?
Yeah, that’s a great question. So first, Bernie’s Book Bank is a response to a ton of research that’s already been done. Somebody’s got to do it, and we own that. Second, we get thousands of thank you notes every month from teachers, administrators, parents, and children, which are absolutely overwhelming. If you’re ever having a bad day, come hang out with me, we’ll read these, it’ll change you in a matter of five minutes. But on top of that, five years ago, we started a randomized control trial that was funded by the John and Laura Arnold Foundation, which, first of all, we felt honored just for them, because they’re a pretty big deal in the philanthropic space, to pick us to fund a randomized control trial. That was conducted by a researcher named Dr. Jeffrey Vorman. It started out as a three-year trial, but COVID had other plans. We were able to adjust it, maintain the integrity of that, and we just recently, probably within the last two weeks, received an internal report that stated significant statistical impact of our program.
And I don’t know if you know this, but for a charitable organization to have a positive response to a randomized control trial is rarified air. And I mentioned earlier I’m a top-line guy—I can’t wait to now go sell this, one, because we have a model that we can now show people, but two, that we have this proven product, initiative that we know works. We know that can be accomplished. And all it takes now is the fuel for the jet. We’ve built the jet and we’re ready to fly.
Well, I think you’ve got some fuel yourself. The passion definitely shows through, which is a big part of it. I personally was the president of a nonprofit for three years, you know, a volunteer position. That’s a tough thing to do, and for you to be doing this since 2009 now, that’s amazing. And seeing that impact statement that you got, that’s what I was hoping we were going to be able to discuss today, because I know you talked about it when I saw you back in March and hearing that you got that positive confirmation that what you’re doing is working is pretty cool.
Well, look, I mean, first of all, thank you for your service on that board. You know, this is very hard work, and if you’re not passionate, you don’t have a chance. And I’ll tell you that, yes, I’ve given a lot to Bernie’s Book Bank, but I have to tell you that Bernie’s Book Bank and the work of Bernie’s Book Bank has given to me way more than I’ve given to it. And the people that have gotten involved, I mean, there’s literally tens of thousands of people involved in Bernie’s Book Bank now. It’s, you know, to be able to turn something that’s super painful into something really positive I think is an opportunity we all have, and as I’ve said before, you know, when you lose something or someone that you care deeply about, there’s a hole in your heart, it’s not going away.
You can pretend it’s not there, which isn’t going to go really well. You can fill it with a bunch of junk, and that’s not going to end real well. Or you can plant a seed in that hole, and you can nurture that, and you can make something incredible come out of something painful. And I hope that if anybody hears anything today that they hear this, because we all are living with pain, and the fact of the matter is no suffering, no joy, and we all have a choice. It doesn’t make the pain go away, but it makes it worthwhile. And if you don’t do anything about it, then that pain is in vain. And so, I think we all need to be encouraged to lean into pain and suffering a little bit more, especially with our children, not try to avoid it, but to know it’s coming and decide what you’re going to do when it does come. Because it’s coming.
Yep. Well, the positive work you’re doing is just so amazing, and I love what you said there. And I know that the hole it’s filling is the, you know, when your dad passed, and Bernie’s Books is kind of a legacy to his work and what he did. I’ve heard you say the story, but I don’t know. If you want, you can tell the story of him growing up and then getting the education and his passion about books. Just so everybody knows where your passion comes from?
Yeah, well, first my passion comes from, it’s a combination of my time in the schools, but also, you know, my dad’s not unique. He’s like many others, you’ve heard this story before, where his mom came on a boat from Poland, his dad came on a boat from Italy, they ended up outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—go Steelers—which means that my grandfather was a coal miner for 51 years. My dad had eight brothers and sisters, they lived in a two-bedroom home, and my dad didn’t have running water until he went to college. And he went on to get his doctorate, put three kids through school, became the director of reading instruction for the state of Delaware, and in one generation, everything changed. And what I realized one day is that he literally read his way to a better life. And the children I was working with in the school were just little Bernies, you know, they just needed a fair shot. And if we can give them a fair shot, not only is it what’s right, but it comes back to impact us one way or the other. And so, you can do something now, or you can wait and do it later, and it can cost you a lot more.
So yeah, the best thing my dad ever did was every time we went back to grandma’s house, we’d go back around the house, and there was the hole where the outhouse was. And it taught me two very important things: This is where you come from, and don’t you ever forget it. And if you’re willing to work really hard, like a coal miner, you can go anywhere you want to go. And that doesn’t mean you can accomplish anything. I think we should all get rid of saying that. I mean, we know that’s just not—I’ll never dunk a basketball, okay? So no matter how much I try, but what it does mean is dream big and work hard. Dream big and work hard. And thanks for sharing good news. You know, we are inundated by bad news, and I’ve been conditioned to think that we’ve got it really, really bad. And to be honest with you, we are super blessed. It’s happening every day, it just doesn’t get reported on, and I think Bernie’s Book Bank is a testament to that.
You’re a great example of that. Alright, well, before we wrap up here, and again, this is awesome, I appreciate everything you do. You don’t know how excited I am about this, when I heard about this, and I want to do what I can to help. But before we wrap up, a couple of things, and it almost feels like it’s anticlimactic after this conversation, but I always like to hear, because we just heard your passions and what you love doing with Bernie’s Books and how you’re helping, but when you’re not doing that, what are your outside-of-work passions? Sounds like golf might be one of them, but what do you enjoy doing when you’re not helping kids get books in their hands?
That’s a good question. You know, I want to be the best father I can be and the best husband I can be—that’s priority number one. As you know, that’s a journey, not a destination. Beyond that, I love to walk. I love to play golf. I love to read. I like to work with my hands, so I love to work in our garden, and I like creating things and watching them grow, so that really works. Beyond that, just trying to maintain a mentality that right now means everything. Life is precious. We often spend a lot of time dwelling on the past or worrying about the future and we miss what’s going on right in front of our face. So we add all those things together. That’s, that’s more than 168 hours a day, so. Or a week!
A day would be tough!
I told you, I’m not an accountant!
I was going to say, as an accountant, I may know those numbers. So, alright, Brian. And then lastly, obviously I’d love for people to go find out more about Bernie’s Book Bank. Where would they look or find out about you or the book bank? What’s the best place?
www.BerniesBookBank.org would be a great place. If you search us on any social media platform, basically, you’ll find us there. But I would encourage you to get involved, especially if you have children, Bernie’s Book Bank is an amazing place to volunteer. I mentioned it earlier, but more than half of the 6,000 hours that are given there a month are given by people under the age of 14. Kids, especially young ones, like, I don’t know, between 2 and 11, they just, they can’t get enough of Bernie’s Book Bank, which, we try hard to create a great experience, but I can’t really put my finger on the why. It really doesn’t matter, it’s just a good thing that they really love it. And we love them being there. So, thank you for the opportunity today.
Well, Brian, thank you. I appreciate you being here and I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes. I’m going to obviously do everything I can to help out and be involved as much as you guys will let me, I guess, too.
Well, I don’t forget things like that.
There you go. And I honestly, when we’re talking, I’m looking around just the room I’m sitting in and I just realized my house is a library. I mean, there’s five books sitting right there. I look over to my right, there’s about 20 books sitting over there. Behind me, there’s books. If I go in every room in my house, there’s books. And that’s something that I’ve always just took for granted, and there’s people that just don’t have the opportunity to take that for granted. So anything you can do, if people are listening today, I highly, highly, highly, highly encourage you to follow the link we’ll put in the show notes, find out more about Bernie’s Books and donate if you feel at all possible to do it. You have any possibility of doing that.
Thank you so much, Randy. It means a lot.
Important Links
About the Guest
Brian Floriani is the Founder of Bernie’s Book Bank. He established Bernie’s Book Bank in 2009 to empower children to through book ownership in memory of his father, Dr. Bernard P. Floriani.
Brian was a lead instructor for Golf Digest Schools in Lake Tahoe and West Palm Beach when he abruptly left his job to become a reading paraprofessional. The sudden death of his father, a self-made man who attributed his success to access to books, inspired him to do something different with his life. Brian spent every day working with struggling readers. And while he was able to help each one individually, he realized that his efforts were not doing anything to prepare young readers. Brian began to envision a business that would pour children’s books into under-served homes and allow children to read their way to a better life. He began collecting children’s books in his garage and distributed them in age-appropriate bags to local children. And thus, Bernie’s Book Bank was born.
Brian served as Executive Director of Bernie’s Book Bank until 2018 when he transitioned into the role of Chief Advancement Officer. In his current role he builds Bernie’s Book Bank by cultivating strategic relationships with partners across all industries.
Meet the Host
Randy Crabtree, co-founder and partner of Tri-Merit Specialty Tax Professionals, is a widely followed author, lecturer and podcast host for the accounting profession.
Since 2019, he has hosted the “The Unique CPA,” podcast, which ranks among the world’s 5% most popular programs (Source: Listen Score). You can find articles from Randy in Accounting Today’s Voices column, the AICPA Tax Adviser (Tax-saving opportunities for the housing and construction industries) and he is a regular presenter at conferences and virtual training events hosted by CPAmerica, Prime Global, Leading Edge Alliance (LEA), Allinial Global and several state CPA societies. Crabtree also provides continuing professional education to top 100 CPA firms across the country.
Schaumburg, Illinois-based Tri-Merit is a niche professional services firm that specializes in helping CPAs and their clients benefit from R&D tax credits, cost segregation, the energy efficient commercial buildings deduction (179D), the energy efficient home credit (45L) and the employee retention credit (ERC).
Prior to joining Tri-Merit, Crabtree was managing partner of a CPA firm in the greater Chicago area. He has more than 30 years of public accounting and tax consulting experience in a wide variety of industries, and has worked closely with top executives to help them optimize their tax planning strategies.