When Quinn Cozens realized his empire turned to ash

Quinn Cozens boasted a mini fitness empire when he was in his early twenties. Then, it all went to his head and the empire collapsed.

Flashback to the post-COVID-19 days, and Quinn Cozens started working his dream job on Sep. 18, 2022. The world was in a renaissance, and the young gun already proved he could buck narratives.

Quinn didn’t work a “big boy” job until August 2021, when the mask hysteria all but ended. But he wasn’t slaving away in that grocery store for long. That wasn’t Quinn’s style.

So in the summer of 2022, Quinn snagged three fitness certifications, walked into the nearest fitness center, went through a piss-poor job interview, and walked out with a gig. Quinn theorized the training manager liked his personality. Either way, he left the grocery store without handing them a two weeks’ notice.

Classic Quinn.

The Cozens Empire brewed

The next four years were a blur for all the right reasons. Quinn quickly built a book of clients. He took advantage of the training manager’s laziness, as that manager kept calling off and passing him clients. Ultimately, they wanted to train with Quinn.

He was so confident they’d stick with him that he never bothered renewing their contracts for another year. They paid him month to month for the duration he worked there.

Quinn also used the place to womanize. He trained with the hottest members, always ensuring he had a good-looking girl at his side. He’d take a few of them to the track over in Jefferson County, Ohio, behind one of the local high schools, and go on his “workout dates.”

With clients also coming in from southwest Pennsylvania, Quinn had the entire Tri-State Area to himself. Thus, an empire was born.

Wielding power from behind the scenes

At 23, Quinn had a borderline monopoly of clientele and gym friends. So much, he became the “shot caller.” If the owner did something Quinn didn’t like, he only needed to threaten to take his talents elsewhere. Oh, and Quinn never said this to the man. He let his actions speak.

The owner once hired a new training manager to bring structure to the club. Translation: Control Quinn. Quinn responded in the most Quinn Cozens way. He let it slip that he traveled to the Pleasant Hills area for a job interview at a big box gym. That new manager was gone within the next two weeks.

When the owner tried forcing the trainers to abide by a new program he dropped $10,000 on, Quinn and his clients resisted. Regardless of the owner’s tactics, Quinn stuck to his homegrown systems while the latest manager defended his actions.

That manager knew what was at stake: We lose Quinn, we lose the club.

Quinn Cozens left anyway

Quinn got sick of working in small-town, blue-collar America. So he bailed. Left after spending the last few months there being “short and arrogant,” as the manager put it. To the point it became clear that Quinn used that manager, the staff, and even members to get on top.

Now, it was time to expand the empire. But instead, Quinn learned the golden rule: Karma’s a bitch. And wow, did karma rear its ugly head.

Quinn sputtered at other locations in larger, more affluent areas. He never sold to clients in the past, and he had no idea how to sell. Past training directors handed him clients, and he only needed to keep them happy.

His incompetence bounced him around five different gyms over the next 18 months. His paychecks waned, and he found himself calling home for the means to pay his bills because he wasn’t profiting.

Karma hit Quinn like a freight train

During his stint in Pittsburgh, Quinn became more reclusive. He spent more time locked in his training office, refusing to speak with members, whom he considered “cheap.”

Worse yet, he lost his power struggles. Two gyms he worked in had such established hierarchies that he couldn’t gain leverage. The people he ended up working for in Pittsburgh’s North Hills saw through his crap. Also in the North Hills, the manager called him out multiple times, blaming Quinn’s lack of proactivity for the gym’s ongoing financial issues.

Training departments are the lifeblood of gyms. And when the man expected to sell isn’t selling, the place goes to Hell. Inside, Quinn felt like Napoleon. He went from crossing the Swiss Alps to suffering a major defeat at Waterloo.

Realizing he was about to get fired, Quinn left the gym and never went back. He blocked everyone’s phone numbers, their social media profiles, and spent the summer unemployed. In a span of 18 months, Quinn had gone from being on top of the training world in his little empire to an afterthought. A has-been. An average nobody.

Working in places he vowed he’d never work in

Jobless and running on financial fumes, Quinn Cozens had no choice. He took a seasonal job at a warehouse and threw boxes onto a conveyor belt.

When that job ended, a steel packaging warehouse called. The same one his dad tried getting him into when Quinn came clean with his financial issues. But Quinn spurned it for the seasonal gig, citing the higher pay.

At that warehouse, Quinn had plenty of time to reflect. He was no longer a popular guy. His reckless social media posting, Marxist in spirit but libertarian in belief, burned every bridge he built. People laughed when they brought his name up, but they wondered the same thing: What happened to him?

That thought also invaded Quinn’s mind. While at that job, he found out one of the truck drivers married a trainer he once worked with. Great, he thought to himself. They’re gonna go tell their wife Quinn Cozens is trapped in a steel warehouse. 

Quinn Cozens had a dirty little secret

One reason Quinn failed at personal training stemmed from lack of desire. During his time in Pittsburgh, the urge to write crept back up and it became a focal point for Quinn.

When he wasn’t training, he was writing. Saying to himself, “I’m only training until my writing career kicks off.”

You can see the irony, I’m sure. Quinn blamed others for refusing to buy training, but he never cared enough to provide adequate service. He thought, “These people have money. They’ll buy training and line my pockets while I can shut myself in the office and write.”

But that never happened. And, growing frustrated with his lack of progress, Quinn shut himself out more. Still, he drove an hour to and from work. Why he didn’t leave the training industry earlier? Well, he was obsessed with prestige and status.

Quinn wanted to go from one prestigious gig to another. That other gig was sports writing. But he stopped, sputtered, and stalled to get there for years.

Quinn then decided to build a republic, not an empire

After he lasted five months at the steel warehouse and moved on to a local distribution center where he only needed to work three days a week, Quinn finally regained his old mojo, albeit differently.

Quinn worked Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at that distribution center. Then he spent his free time pursuing. He spurned his family and got on most of their bad sides. But he didn’t care. Quinn had been at it for too long, trying and failing, to care.

He couldn’t stand seeing them happy if he wasn’t. Still, he set his sights lower. Build a republic, not an empire. But if that meant necessary burned bridges, so be it.

And he got there. Quinn Cozens got there. It wasn’t pretty. He still lived at a subsistence level, but he earned enough to freelance as an indie sports writer. Mission accomplished, even if he left destruction in his wake.

Quinn got what he wanted, but at a cost

Quinn may have built a republic and forgone the empire, but Karma wasn’t through with him yet. His sister, Jackie, wanted nothing to do with him. She, before anyone else, realized Quinn saw people as chess pieces.

His extended family followed, sans his cousin Jonas and his parents. Quinn’s grandparents would’ve stuck by him, but they died off. One by one.

Before Quinn knew it, he realized he lost everything that mattered. It slipped away. All because of his lust to control situations and reach his ambitions.

He had no friends other than Jonas and an acquaintance named Martin. He was barely welcome anywhere in town, as so many there who had ties to that old gym held grudges against him. In the gym (a different one), Quinn kept to himself. He’d go in, work out, then leave, barely looking up or speaking.

He was a sports writer. An influencer. But at the end of the day, Quinn had nothing he could take with him for eternity. He lived a cursed existence. One where he reached his goals, but sacrificed everything worth having.

Quinn Cozens’ redemption arc

Jonas wanted to get Quinn out of the house. It’d been too long. They barely hung out one-on-one since high school. Quinn agreed, albeit reluctantly.

It was at that K-pop metal concert when Quinn heard gunshots. Screams beyond the insane. A more frightening situation than Quinn could’ve imagined.

He dove face-first into the mud, crawling through mounds of flailing bodies breathing their last breaths. If he reached the tree line, Quinn knew he’d have a chance.

What he didn’t know was that someone already made it there. Someone too frozen in fear to start running. Yui Kikuchi, one of the performers. Someone who had zero survival skills and would die if Quinn didn’t help her.

For once, he had someone to care for. And for once, though he didn’t realize it at the time, Quinn had a shot at redemption. His empire may’ve fallen, and his little republic had now gone to the wayside. But Quinn was about to learn what truly mattered.

Read his story in Book I of my dystopian survival trilogy, Beyond the Lost Horizon.