Most sessions at ASI Show Chicago do not start with a disclaimer about sensitive subject matter.

This one did.

That’s because the story that Jason McCracken, account executive for Counselor Top 40 distributor BAMKO (asi/131431), shared with the audience during Education Day at ASI Show Chicago wasn’t easy to hear.

And, in his own words, we were getting the PG-13 version.

Jason McCracken delivered a powerful and emotional presentation about his past struggles and how he turned his life around; he’s now a successful distributor sales rep who finds motivation in being a good role model and safety net for his children.

McCracken’s journey to where he is now, leading an impressive sales career for one of the biggest names in the industry, involved enormous difficulty and tragedy. He cycled through photos of his life, beginning when he was three years old, and frankly delivered the facts of his life, such as how he was subjected to horrific violence at the hands of his mother’s boyfriend around the time that first photo was taken. He spared no excruciating detail of the trauma he endured throughout his childhood: abuse, neglect, grief, all leading to leaving his family home for Los Angeles as a teenager, where he put himself through high school.

In his own words, though, that took a bit more ingenuity than it did test scores, including hacking into the system and giving himself enough credits to graduate despite having what one might call a questionable attendance record.

Throughout his young adulthood, he found himself using drugs like heroin and ending up homeless in Seattle and Los Angeles. Despite all of this, though, he says there was something in his brain – the same wiring that he believes makes it difficult for him to sit in a classroom – that wouldn’t let him beg. He still had to work.

“There was something in my brain that I couldn’t ask someone for money,” McCracken said. “Any time I needed money for drugs I always worked. I’d find a job. I never stole any money and I never begged for money.”

You could argue that it was McCracken’s work ethic that saved his life. Even while in the throes of drug addiction, his work ethic seemingly overpowered everything else, and he was working at Guitar Center helping to design stores in Southern California – a job he admits that he got while under the influence and having shown up to the interview late and sweating profusely.

Eventually, after making the decision to get sober and with a child on the way, McCracken was working three jobs to keep financially afloat – at Home Depot, Office Depot and then delivering pizzas at night. The Office Depot job became full-time, and in time McCracken landed another job managing a retail T-Mobile location. He continued to work his way up, exhibiting the same work ethic from before with a renewed energy and guiding force in his life. He poured his soul into his job at T-Mobile, creating custom shirts and decking himself out in all of the corporate colors for events.

At this point in the story, the room full of promo pros started to see where things were going. This was now common ground, familiar territory. Even if they could not, hopefully, relate to what McCracken had experienced and relayed throughout the first part of his presentation, they could now find a kindred spirit in someone who loved creating promotional items.

And it was at this point where McCracken could bring everything full circle – all of the experiences that he carried with him he now used in his career in promo.

His arguments center around the idea that the distributor is the value – not the product or service.

“You are the unique piece of the puzzle,” he says. “Especially in this business you’re not sitting next to anybody who sells anything different than yourself. You all sell the same things, period, full stop. Stop talking like the company you work for is the snowflake. You are the snowflake. You are the special thing that makes the special thing, the transaction, different. Lean into that. Lean into what makes you special, and the orders will come.”

Among his other lessons, McCracken made sure to remind everyone in the room, no matter how old they were, that they were “at halftime,” meaning that right now is the point between their past and their future – however they believe it can be and want it to be. Now is the time to make any changes or adjustments to position oneself to continue down a path to achieve all of their goals – a yellow brick road as he described it in his presentation.

And wouldn’t he know a thing or two about that sort of thing?