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Charlie Traffas
Charlie Traffas has been involved in marketing, media, publishing and insurance for more than 40 years. In addition to being a fully-licensed life, health, property and casualty agent, he is also President and Owner of Chart Marketing, Inc. (CMI). CMI operates and markets several different products and services that help B2B and B2C businesses throughout the country create customers...profitably. You may contact Charlie by phone at (316) 721-9200, by e-mail at ctraffas@chartmarketing.com, or you may visit at www.chartmarketing.com.
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2009-09-01 14:47:00
Shirley Hart’s Derby filling station in Sharon
Question: The other day a lady interviewed me. Among other questions she asked, “How did you guys ever come up with the idea for The Q & A Times?” When I was through answering her question, she thought it was interesting and suggested I use it as an article. Needing one for this month, I took her advice. Here is how I answered her.
Answer: “It happened a long time ago…when I was about five or six,” I said. She immediately looked puzzled, wrinkled up her nose and said, “What? No one could come up with an idea like that at that young of an age!” I said, “Well, it may be hard to believe, but it is as true and as clear to me as if it happened yesterday.” She sat back a bit in her chair and began to listen. Here’s what I told her. I was born and raised on a farm just three miles south of Sharon, Kansas. As did any youngster on the farm back in those days (and still today), I always had lots of chores. I of course thought I had more of them and the harder ones than my two younger brothers (Tim and Rory), because I was the oldest and pretty good size for my age. So Dad had pretty well made up his mind who was going to do the “heavy” stuff long before the chore came up. For instance, when it came to hauling hay, I got the job. When it came to driving the tractor while baling hay and Dad riding the sled stacking the bales, it was one of them. They probably wouldn’t attest to this today, but that’s how it was the way I remember it. It certainly made baseball games in the summer, the County Fair and those infrequent times when we got to go to town to Grandma’s and ride bikes, most enjoyable. I don’t know why it is but I have always had a preoccupation with death, even when I was only five or six. Dad told me one time when I was about that age about his brother, who as a teenager, got kicked in the stomach by a mule. He died of complications from it a few days later. I thought about what it would be like to lose someone really close. What it would be like to have a brother or sister there one day, and gone the next. The first person I remember knowing who died was a neighbor of ours, John Hunter. His sons Joe and Dean rode on our bus. Their farm was about three miles west of us and a quarter mile north. John would stop at our place from time to time to visit with Dad about all kinds of things. I remember he and Dad always talked while leaning over the front of their pickups. That was the way they did it back then. John died very unexpectedly. I believe he died on a Friday. The next day Dad told me he had died the night before. I couldn’t get over the thought, “He won’t ever be by again.” I kept thinking about that for a long time. You would think that once off the farm, getting a break from all of those terrible chores (smile), at Grandma’s, and on my bike, riding it is all I would do. But at least half of the time, I would ride down to Shirley Hart’s Derby filling station about three blocks from Grandma’s, and sit on my bike as I listened to several of the old men, who would sit on the bench each day and talk about all kinds of things. I figured they knew a whole lot more about “things” than the kids I was riding bikes with, after all they were my age and I sure didn’t know much. There were 8 or 10 of these older men that were there most of the time. I can still remember them. My Grandpa Duckworth was usually always there. He had been the Santa Fe depot agent for Sharon before he retired. He was licensed to practice law in Missouri but I’m not sure if he ever did. I always thought he was one of the smartest men I ever knew. The other men were smart too. All these men and Grandpa talked about everything…Eisenhower, the price of wheat, cattle and hogs, things going on in town, sports…all sorts of things. I would sit there, on my bike, and take it all in. As I would listen, I would see those old gasoline pumps in the background that Shirley had, with the glass running up the side of them and those big nozzles. I thought about how some day, these men would die and take all of this “smartness” with them. What a shame! Look at all of that knowledge, and all of those experiences that would be lost forever. Wouldn’t it be great if there was some way to capture it all and make it available for all of the folks still here, and use it so each of us would not have to re-learn what they already knew. I had watched those pumps fill up the gas tanks on cars, trucks and tractors for a long time at Shirley’s. I thought to myself, “I wonder if those things can run in reverse?” Meaning, I wondered if they could be hooked up in reverse and “suck in” instead of “pump out.” If they could, maybe we could stick the nozzle in these old men’s ears and suck out all of what they knew. Then we could put it in a tank somewhere, take young kids like me, hook us up by sticking the nozzle in our ears, then pump out all of this knowledge and give us all a “head start” in life. If I could have received a quarter for every time I thought about this from then until the time I went to college, I promise…it would have paid my way. In late 2000, I was writing articles on various types of long term care for several Midwestern publications. I was most familiar with this topic as I had been fortunate to be a top producing agent in Kansas for senior products like long term care insurance, Medicare supplements, annuities, etc.; I had been honored with serving on the Insurance Commissioner’s Board of Advisors; and my company handled the marketing for the largest provider of senior living in the USA. As I continued to write, I found that I was running out of topics. I had been doing my best to write back answers to the questions I was receiving, but I could never get to them all. So, instead of trying to come up with more topics, I began answering the questions I had received…in my columns. I used the question for the title of the article and used my answer as the editorial. The more I answered, the more I received. I thought to myself, “I wonder if there is an opportunity for a stand-alone publication that would do nothing but answer questions…on every subject from “soup to nuts and hairnets to hip boots” (an Ol’ Mikeism)…instead of just senior products. I then thought about who I would get to be our writers. It took me about three seconds before I remembered those days of listening to those old men at Shirley Hart’s filling station. I would get the folks who own, operate or manage their own businesses as my writers. I have been working with businesses for many years. While I am sure there are wonderful consultants and advisors for every kind of product and service imaginable, no one knows as much about these products and services as the people who own, operate or manage the businesses that provide them. They have sunk as much of their lives and more into their businesses as I have sunk into mine. Think about it…if you were going to put a new roof on your home, and you were trying to decide what type of roof you should put on, who better to ask than the owner of a roofing company who has put on thousands of different kinds of roofs over the past 30 or 40 years? But you don’t call him or her, do you? Why? Because you’re afraid that he or she will try and sell you something rather than give you the information and education you want. It works the same for almost any product or service. You want the information, but you don’t want them to present something to you, or sell you something, until you’re ready to listen and in the market to buy. That was my solution…get these kinds of folks (owners, operators or managers of businesses) to answer the questions we receive, but stop them short of selling. They can use the ad they purchase from us, always located a few pages away from the article, for that. How do you stop them from selling? You tell them they cannot use the pronouns “I”, “We”, “Ours” or “Us” as they provide information and education in their articles. You also make sure they don’t mention the name of their company, product or service in the answer. It’s like purifying water…once you remove all of the other stuff…all you have left is “pure” water. The same goes for the answers to the questions in this publication…once you remove all of the pronouns, names of the businesses, products and the services…all you have left is pure “public relations.” Public relations is defined as the process of inducing good will for a person, product, service, firm or institution by providing information, education and/or some other service, without being commercial. We would put their name at the top of the article, their photo and a short bio at the end to let people know why they are qualified to answer the question. We started publishing the very same day that Parade Magazine turned 60 years old (May 1st, 2001). Parade Magazine is the most widely circulated publication on the planet, with nearly 40 million copies weekly. I have always thought since we started, when I “grow up” I want to be Parade. The Q & A Times is my attempt to get things others know so well, “pumped in” to the minds of those who don’t know these things, in a non-commercial fashion, so we…as a society…don’t have to re-learn everything all the time and can advance more rapidly. Imagine how fast that could be. If it works…this is how it works. Hopefully we perform a valuable service for you, our readers, by letting you know about all kinds of things from a non-commercial perspective, along with the ads that tell you who the advertisers are, what they do and what they would like you to do. If we do work, we certainly couldn’t do it without each of you…our readers…AND each of our writers, who now number in excess of 550 that we have featured over the past 8 ½ years. They are very special to us. Because they take the time to inform and educate you about a myriad of things with their writings…we hope they are special to you too.
 
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