A ‘devastated’ online marketer has banned men from becoming clients after claiming ‘sexists’ bombard her with creepy messages as she tries to build her business.
Mindy Sidhu from Berkshire said she has felt ‘violated’ since her first client contacted her digital marketing company My Pretty Marketing in March 2021.
The 32-year-old was finally able to quit her full-time job last month after promoting her company on a variety of social media accounts, sharing contact details, including a mobile number, for prospective clients to contact her on.
She says some men then try to ‘taken advantage of’ being able to contact her by sending inappropriate messages to her on Instagram and WhatsApp and ‘treating her differently’ because she is a woman.
Mindy knows she will ‘lose money’ since around 45 per cent of her clients are men but says she cannot face being harassed any more.
She put a ‘business update’ on social media last week saying she will ‘only work with female clients’.
However she later conceded that she will ‘select a handful of male clients’ – ones she’s worked with previously with no problems or those who are couples.
The senior marketing director claims she has even been told by one client he ‘only works with pretty women’, while others have asked her out for drinks during out-of-office hours and make her feel ‘really uncomfortable’.
Her ‘last straw’ came a week ago when an ‘inappropriate’ potential client claimed he was only working with her so he could flirt with her.
Mindy, from Maidenhead, said: ‘This is sexist. I can’t put my finger on it, they’re treating me differently than they would a male.
‘I started my business a year-and-a-half ago. As you can imagine, I was so excited it was my first ever client.
‘I sent him a quote and out of the blue, he randomly messaged me to send him pictures of my feet and asked what shoe size I was.
‘I was devastated when it first happened, I was going to quit my business.
‘I put a post up on social media and said it wasn’t appropriate, that if people are going to do business with me then don’t [do it].
‘I had a few people who then carried on and I just used to ignore them.
‘Or I carried on working with clients who I thought were being a bit inappropriate but would carry on and ignore their advances, hoping they’d stop.
‘This is all from men, I don’t get this from women. I’ll work with males I have worked with before or ones who have come with their partner, for example their wife or girlfriend is just as involved in the project. I have a few couples who I work with.’
Mindy claims a prospective client looked up her personal social media accounts last week and started ‘liking’ all of her social media pictures.
When she politely requested he keep things professional, he apparently messaged back revealing he wanted to ‘flirt’ with her.
Frustrated, she posted on her Instagram story warning customers that she would now ‘only work with female clients’ – before clarifying she would take on a handful of men she could trust.
The post read: ‘Clients flirting with me or just taking my business so they can talk to me. This is usually male clients and I’m sick of it. It’s so unfair anyway.
‘I’ve decided I’m only working with female clients. I will select a handful of male clients that I don’t mind working with but my niche is mainly females. It’s a shame because I don’t think men have to deal with this c**p.’
She says that last week another ‘inappropriate’ potential client claimed he was only working with her so he could flirt with her. This proved to be the final straw, prompting her to post a damning ‘business update’ stating she will ‘only work with female clients’
Mindy said: ‘I had someone message me and ask if I’d help them with their business. I didn’t reply to him because I could see he’d been liking all my photos on my personal Instagram.
‘He messaged me again saying “I’m serious about business if you’re available. I don’t want you to think that I’m flirting with you”.
‘I replied saying “no, that’s fine. As long as you’re sure because I keep my business very professional”.
‘He replied to say he did want to flirt with me and that’s why he was doing business with me.
”I’ve had people flirting, telling me I look good. I’ve had another client saying he only works with pretty women.
‘He asked me to get influencers for his business and to make sure they’re all pretty. I understand he was trying to build an image but I felt a bit taken aback.
‘Those are the sort of advances I was looking past, then when the most recent incident happened I was like “I can’t do this anymore”. It was making me really uncomfortable to talk to these people.
‘Men make up between 30% and 45% of my clientele. I’m going to be losing money but now I just don’t think it’s worth my mental state of mind.
‘When you start a business, you have loads of negative thoughts about your business anyway. Adding this negativity on top of it is such a burden.’