TexasTakeover

Dr. Mortensen, MD, PA-C, EMT-P, MLT is a physician, researcher, and medical innovator with three decades of elite patient care. He began his career in 1995 and advanced through every level of frontline medicine — from EMT, Paramedic, Flight Medic, Fire Captain, and Physician Associate before earning his MD with honors.

His accomplishments include two unprecedented rescues in the Everest Death Zone, a Guinness World Record crossing of the Arctic Ocean, founding clinics and community centers in Fiji and Honduras, and delivering disaster relief in Haiti. He has raised awareness and funds for autism in Hawaii and produced a documentary film to fight human trafficking in Thailand.

Closer to home, he specializes in regenerative therapies, neural optimization, and longevity medicine, guided by the belief that no patient is too big or too small. With a Master’s in Learning Technologies and a published thesis on social entrepreneurship, Dr. Mortensen built Mortensen Medical as a nonprofit where pursuing your health creates the power to transform someone else’s.

Samantha Horwitz is a 9/11 First Responder and former United States Secret Service Agent. She holds a B.S. in Criminology and Criminal Justice and a J.D. from Howard University School of Law. An expert in post-traumatic stress (PTS) and resiliency training, she speaks nationally to diverse audiences on recognizing and managing PTS, reducing workplace stress, and supporting those affected — with a particular focus on first responder suicide prevention. Featured in People Magazine, FOX, ABC, CBS, and Blaze TV, Sam authored The Silent Fall: A Secret Service Agent’s Story of Tragedy and Triumph After 9/11 and co-hosts A Badge of Honor TV with John Salerno.

If you've followed Boyd for any amount of time, you know that he is “built different”. He's an Air Force veteran, former bodybuilder, an elite-level powerlifter, has run 100 miles 3 times, and is an Ironman.

There's only one human alive that has ever done 3 of these:

• Ironman Finisher
• 100 mile run
• 800 lb deadlift
• 600 lb bench

And Boyd Myers has done all 4.

TJ Bongiorno is an American entrepreneur, founder, and content creator known for building e-commerce brands in the health and wellness space.

• Founder of The Outgoing Co.: He leads this fast-growing supplement and nootropic brand that focuses on alcohol alternatives, functional beverages, and modern wellness products. The company emphasizes a subscription-first model, effective Meta ads, and scalable operations. He’s recently successfully launched Yapper — a clean, lightly carbonated functional energy drink and social performance beverage developed by The Outgoing Co. It acts as a coffee or alcohol alternative to provide a jitter-free energy boost and mood enhancement.
• Previous Ventures: He previously founded Ramp Health, an e-commerce brand in the health/supplement space. He scaled it while transitioning from a full-time corporate job, secured funding, and went full-time in late 2024 with a focus on rapid profitability.
• Corporate Experience: Before entrepreneurship, he worked in sales engineering and tech roles at companies like Qualified.com, OwnBackup, Integral Ad Science, and Tremor Video DSP.

TJ is the Co-Host of @dthshow and represents a newer wave of direct-to-consumer founders who leverage digital advertising, lean operations, and personal branding to grow consumer health products quickly. He is based in the New York area.

Ben is a certified nutritionist, online coach, and competitive bodybuilder who helps people build better physiques through a sustainable, nutrition-first approach. After adding more than 70 pounds of muscle to his own frame over the last 11 years, he has built his coaching philosophy around the same principles that transformed his own body: intelligent nutrition, purposeful training, and recovery that supports long term progress.

He specialises in helping people lose body fat without sacrificing hard-earned muscle, and build muscle without unnecessary fat gain. His focus is not on quick fixes or all or nothing methods, but on helping clients create habits, systems, and decision making skills they can carry for life.

What sets Ben apart is how much he values the people he works with and the transformations they achieve. He takes genuine pride in helping clients break through barriers, navigate setbacks, and build momentum, not just physically, but mentally. For him, coaching is not simply about delivering a plan. It is about communication, problem solving, and being personally invested in every stage of the journey.

As both a competitive bodybuilder and a hobbybuilder at heart, Ben understands how to balance ambitious physique goals with the realities of everyday life. His coaching combines evidence based nutrition with lived experience, helping people improve their physique, performance, and confidence through methods that are both effective and sustainable.

Ben’s mission is simple: help people take ownership of their health, build stronger bodies, and create progress they can be proud of.

Alex Wignall is an entrepreneur with 15 years’ experience in the addiction and real-estate fields, and a new health and wellness business, Vanguard Performance Labs. You may know Vanguard Performance as Fitness X’s favorite direct to patient lab provider. But Alex has much bigger plans for the company.

As a society we seem to be hurtling towards increasing technological sophistication, AI, automation, and robotics. Many are placing big bets for the future here. Vanguard is taking the opposite approach. The true new frontier will be the human body.

As we take our biohacking, supplementation, and augmentation to the next level Vanguard hopes to provide every resource necessary to make sure we stay healthy and safe by providing everyone with access to cutting edge diagnostic, lab, and imaging services at affordable cash pay rates.

Alexander Cortes (AJAC) is a fitness coach, writer, entrepreneur, and self-described “American Industrialist” and “Broscientist” with a large following across multiple social media platforms. He is known as the “OG of Fitness X.” He has transitioned from personal training and online fitness education to building supplement and manufacturing businesses focused on performance, brain health, and domestic production.

He began working as a personal trainer around 2009–2010 (initially at a gym like 24 Hour Fitness) and trained clients full-time through roughly 2016, including in-person work in Hollywood. He has trained hundreds of clients over the years. He expanded into online coaching, collaborating with figures like John Meadows (Mountain Dog Training), writing for sites like EliteFTS, and creating his own programs, newsletters, and content on training, nutrition, and “bro science” (practical, evidence-informed fitness advice). His coaching philosophy emphasizes biomechanics, periodization, intensity techniques, client transformations, and holistic self-improvement. He has shared his own story of building a personal brand and digital business starting around 2017–2018 after years of consistent writing and training.

More recently, Cortes founded Athanor Inc. (American Creatine) with a focus on rebuilding U.S. domestic manufacturing of specialty chemicals, starting with creatine. The project is vertically integrated, aiming to produce creatine from raw precursors to finished product in the U.S. (most global creatine is currently imported, largely from China). He highlights creatine’s benefits not just for muscle/performance but for brain health, neurodegeneration, recovery, and broader national resilience.

NeuroVolt is Cortes’ personal nootropic formulation, developed and produced before the Athanor creatine project. It is based on ingredients he has used for years to support brain metabolism, focus, and energy (e.g., Rhodiola Rosea for adaptogenic/stress resistance, Tyrosine, Alpha-GPC, and others). He formulated it as a custom stack drawing from his experiences with pre-workouts and cognitive enhancement.

Overall, AJAC’s career reflects a progression from hands-on coaching and content creation in the fitness space to product development and ambitious manufacturing ventures aimed at performance optimization and American industrial capacity.

We’re Phat Empire, a marketing partner that helps businesses get more value from the audience they’ve already built.

We work alongside your existing marketing efforts to make sure there’s a clear, comprehensive plan for staying connected with customers, former customers, and engaged leads. We help identify opportunities, recommend the right marketing actions, and take ownership of email strategy and execution — from planning and writing to sending, tracking, and improving performance.

Our focus isn’t cold email or blasting strangers. We help businesses consistently market to people who already know them, so they stay top of mind, strengthen relationships, generate repeat business, reactivate past customers, and turn more existing opportunities into revenue.

Instead of treating email as a standalone tactic, we make sure it works together with the rest of your marketing.

The Outgoing Co. is a fast-growing supplement and nootropic brand focused on alcohol alternatives, functional beverages, and modern wellness products.

Its latest launch is Yapper — a clean, lightly carbonated functional energy drink and social performance beverage. It works as a coffee or alcohol alternative, delivering a jitter-free energy boost and mood enhancement.

Founded in 2023 by TJ Bongiorno, who also joins us as a speaker.

Entrepreneur and health/fitness enthusiast based in Austin, TX. Raised on organic food and Shaklee supplements courtesy of his mom, Brandon built a lifelong foundation in health that’s carried him into his mid-40s — fueling a routine of boxing, basketball, weightlifting, and building businesses online. Along the way, he’s tried nearly every supplement trend on the market.

In 2025, tired of paying premium prices for products backed by slick marketing and little else, Brandon and his friend-turned-Genesis co-founder set out to build the AM/PM stack they couldn’t find: real focus and energy by day, real rest and recovery by night — no caffeine, no melatonin, no jitters, no hangovers. No flashy science, no big budget — just two gym bros digging through Fitness X and the research until they got it right.

It worked. Genesis has since spread organically through Fitness X and word of mouth, and Brandon and the Genesis team are just getting started on their mission to disrupt the supplement industry.