“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

Most of us will choose fight or flight in the face of fear at some point in our lives. Some of us face fears on a daily basis.

As we ring in the new year, we want to make a resolution for ourselves and all of you. We’ll do it together! All of January, we are going to carry the theme of “Conquering Our Fears” as our New Year’s Resolution.

We’re creating posts to help you, our readers, to overcome the various fears you may face when doing email marketing and marketing automation.

All of us here at Benchmark are committing to conquering our fears as well. That way we’re in it together. Plus, you can win something along the way!

The Contest

Editor’s note: This contest has ended. Thanks to everyone who participated and congratulations to the winner.

We will be running a contest for the entire month of January.

For every retweet milestone (20, 50, 100, etc.) this post gets, many of us at Benchmark will commit to facing our fears.

What does that mean?

For example, I’m committing to conquering my fear of heights by going down the glass Skyslide nearly 1,000 ft over downtown LA. All it will take is 20 Retweets. I’m setting the barrier low for myself. It’s my idea, and I’ll be the first to do it.

Plus, every person that retweets this post will be entered to win a $50 Amazon gift card.

Here Are the Other Fears We’re Committed to Overcoming

I asked everyone across the globe here at Benchmark what fear they’d be willing to overcome and how many retweets it would take for them to face it.

It’s our Fear Factor, except it doesn’t end with Joe Rogan giving us money. You’ll see by the retweet threshold they set how brave everyone is.

Retweet away. We’ll put together a video at the end as proof of us holding up our end of the bargain.

  • 20 RTs: Andy Shore, Content & Social Networking Manager, will face his fear of heights by sliding down the glass Skyslide 1,000 feet over downtown Los Angeles.
  • 50 RTs: Alvaro Rosado, Marketing Design, will eat chapulines, which are grasshoppers found in Mexico.
  • 75 RTs: Ronald Liang, Front End Developer, will go on a rollercoaster.
  • 100 RTs: Robert Schweickert, Business Development Executive, will jump out of an airplane.
  • 250 RTs: Matt Alonso, Country Manager for Brazil & Portugal, will hold a frog.
  • 500 RTs: Daniel Miller, Marketing Director, will face his fear of needles by getting acupuncture.
  • 1,000 RTs: Freddy Uribio, Latin America Regional Manager, will also eat bugs.
  • 10,000 RTs: Irene Martinez, Training Manager, will go swimming in the ocean.
  • 850,000 RTs: Debbie Running, Accounting/Human Resources, will eat escargot.
  • 1,000,000 RTs: Jose Hernandez, VP of Sales & Marketing, will touch a snake.

Look (Stats About) Fear in the Face

I came across a ton of interesting information while I was writing this introductory post for January’s theme and contest.

Since this post will hopefully be shared quite a bit (in the name of overcoming fears, I figured including an infographic of all the fun stats I found would be helpful.

Infographic: Conquering Our Fears

Keep that last stat in mind as you learn from our New Year’s Resolution this month. If you can overcome your fears about email marketing and marketing automation, you’re already ahead of everyone else who couldn’t. Get started today!

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by Andy Shore

Andy Shore found his way to Benchmark when he replied to a job listing promising a job of half blogging, half social media. His parents still don’t believe that people get paid to do that. Since then, he’s spun his addiction to pop culture and passion for music into business and marketing posts that are the spoonful of sugar that helps the lessons go down. As the result of his boss not knowing whether or not to take him seriously, he also created the web series Ask Andy, which stars a cartoon version of himself. Despite being a cartoon, he somehow manages to be taken seriously by many of his readers ... and few of his coworkers.