Licensed counselor (LPC). 15 years helping men build real friendships and start men's groups in Boulder, CO. Plain talk, no fluff. Free first-meeting kit below.
🔐
Enter hub password to continue
Wrong password
buildamensgroup.com
Bob Manthy: X (Twitter) Launch Kit
Everything Bob needs to stand up his X account by hand in about ten minutes, then start posting. Manual setup only: clean, ToS-compliant, no ban risk to his real name.
The strategy is surgical: be the calm, credentialed LPC voice around the handful of credible accounts driving the male-friendship conversation, and point people back to buildamensgroup.com.
Voice rule for everything here: plain, first-person, grounded, the way Bob actually talks. No hype, no therapy-speak, never the word "loneliness."
Profile fields
Copy these straight into the X sign-up and profile screens.
Handle (first choice)
@BobManthyLPC
Display name
Bob Manthy, LPC
Website field
https://buildamensgroup.com
Location field
Boulder, Colorado
Handle fallbacks if the first is taken, in order: @BobManthy_LPC, @RobertManthyLPC, @ManthyLPC, @BobManthyCounsel.
Bio (X caps this at 160 characters)
157 characters. Fits with room to spare.
Profile photo
Bob supplies this. A real, friendly headshot: plain background, good light, looking at the camera, the way a counselor's photo looks on a practice website. This is the credibility anchor, so it should be genuinely him, not a graphic. Square crop, at least 400x400.
Header image
Designed on-brand and included with this kit (slate blue + amber, 1500x500, no faces). Bob just uploads the file. It's in the shared project folder as bob-x-header.png.
Exact signup sequence
Do this on the device that has Bob's real mobile number handy.
- Go to x.com/i/flow/signup
- Choose Create account. Enter name Robert Manthy and Bob's real email.
- Human step X will ask for a real phone number and text a code. Use Bob's actual mobile (not a Google Voice / VoIP number, X rejects those). Type in the code.
- Set a strong password (save it in your password manager).
- Human step solve any "are you human" / CAPTCHA puzzle if it appears.
- When prompted for a username, set @BobManthyLPC (or the first available fallback above).
- Skip the "turn on notifications" and "find people you know" prompts.
- Go to Profile → Edit profile: upload the profile photo, upload the header image, paste the bio, add the website and location.
- Follow these four seed accounts so the timeline fills with the right conversation:
- @RichardvReeves
- @profgalloway
- American Institute for Boys and Men
- Daniel Cox (Survey Center on American Life)
- Post the pinned intro below, then pin it (tap the post → the three dots → "Pin to your profile").
That's it. Everything after this is posting.
Pinned intro post
I'm Bob Manthy. For 15 years I've worked as a counselor in Boulder, and most of that time I've spent on one thing: helping men build friendships they can actually count on.
Most men have coworkers and acquaintances and not much past that. It's fixable. I'll post what actually works here. No hype.
First standalone posts
Space these out: two a week. Post one, wait a few days, post the next. Don't dump them all at once.
Post A
Most men don't need therapy. They need three or four guys who'll pick up the phone. That's a different problem, and it has a different fix.
Post B
A men's group isn't a support group. It's a standing plan with the same men, on the same night, doing something real. The consistency is the whole trick.
Post C
The hardest part of making friends as a grown man isn't the talking. It's the asking. Somebody has to go first. Be the guy who goes first.
Post D
If you want friends you can count on, stop waiting to bump into them. Pick a night. Invite three men. Do it again next month. That's the method. That's all of it.
Post E
Retirement takes the friendships a man had built in around his job and quietly removes them. Nobody warns you. If that's you, you're not stuck. You just need a new structure.
Post F
Men reconnect shoulder to shoulder, not face to face. Fix a truck, walk a trail, build a thing. The talking comes easy once your hands are busy.
Reply / quote-tweet templates
This is the real growth engine. When one of the seed accounts posts about male friendship or the friendship recession, reply or quote-tweet with something like these. Two or three a week does more than any amount of posting into the void.
When Reeves or AIBM posts the data
The numbers are right, and here's the part that gives me hope after 15 years running these groups: the fix is boring and it works. Same men, same night, a real reason to show up. Men don't need much. They need a standing invitation.
When Galloway talks about men in trouble
He's right that this is real. What I'd add from the counseling chair: men don't reconnect by talking about connection. They reconnect doing something side by side. Build the activity, and the friendship follows.
When Cox's "friendship recession" stat comes up
That jump from 3% to 15% matches what I see. The good news from the field: it reverses fast once a man has one standing commitment with the same few guys. The structure does the work, not willpower.
General reply when someone asks "how do I even make friends as an adult man"
Pick a night. Invite three men you half-know. Do something, don't just "grab coffee." Then do it again next month. Boring and repeatable beats clever every time. I put the whole first-meeting playbook here for free: buildamensgroup.com
Cadence and rules of thumb
- 2 standalone posts a week, from the list above or in that voice.
- 2 to 3 replies / quote-tweets a week to the seed accounts. This is where the reach is.
- Don't chase hashtags. The audience that matters clusters around those few credible accounts, not the broad tag.
- Link to the site sparingly, mostly in replies where someone's actually asking how to start. A hard sell every post reads as spam.
- Never use the word "loneliness" in posts. Lead with "real friends," "men you can count on," "friends who have your back."
- Keep it plain and dignified. If a post sounds like a motivational poster, rewrite it.