"Arnold says h-a-llo and Franco says "Hi" too".
Fake it till you make it.
LOL!!! It makes me wonder what else Tom attempted to fake it until he made it. I once read that Tom would smoke $100 cigars with Arnold, not grasping that making $8,000 a month from one seminar after another, a FLEX magazine publishing contract [if he had one], and other sources of revenue [minimal prize money - but possibly some decent profit selling gear IF he choose to go down that route], minus the gear, food, and gym membership, travel costs, and other expenses from bodybuilding would still be a decent career for him, but not much when you consider how fleeting bodybuilding is, and something that Tom basically had for 14 years - from 1981 when many argued he should have won the Mr. Olympia, beating Chris Dickerson and Mr. Olympia winner that year - Franco Columbu ["Franco!! Franco says hi."], rather than placing 3rd that year. I think that also explains his comments about Lee Haney, when he said that Lee wasn't a legend yet. After all, he had just won one Mr. Olympia at that point [the video was taken in 1985], and Tom Platz probably reasonably thought of himself as being pretty close to the Mr. Olympia winning level, based on his 1981 result, which I think most people felt Platz placed unfairly low, with it not being an uncommon opinion at all that Platz should have won.
Top pro bodybuilders can make a lot of money in the world of bodybuilding if they play their cards right, and if they are businessmen about it [which Franco seemed to be], but the money - no matter how good it is - is ultimately fleeting.
Tom should not have been smoking $100 cigars with Arnold just to look cool, and that may be part of the reason now why he has [correct me if I'm wrong on this one], but sold some of his posing trunks on eBay. He may have sold some of his old trophies or Mr. Olympia competitor medallions as well, and was selling recent [past 10 years] training and nutrition videos for something like $150. I think he was [or is] also working in an auto dealership. Had he saved the potential $100,000+ he was making per year in the 1980's and through to the 1990's and invested that money into rental properties, he could have been doing pretty well these days. But oh well. Not to bash on Tom or anything - by all counts, he is a very well-spoken and easy guy to speak, and still has amazing legs for his age [or for any age], even today at 65. I just think it's too bad that bodybuilders think the endless high-income cash will last forever, and don't always plan for the future. It seems like only rare bodybuilders actually do that, and then you get former top bodybuilders like Tom Platz still working at 65 when they should be starting their retirement at that age.
Tom Platz did say that a recent t-shirt line that he produced was selling well in Europe, but I don't know what that means. People on here were saying that people always state high sells in Europe, because the claims are impossible to verify, and help to give the company the impression of success and popularity - maybe so that people in North America start buying them thinking that they are trendy already elsewhere in the world.
On that note [of fake it 'til you make it], I think it's still to do that with money, because I think if you fake pretending to be rich, you will just ultimately end up in the poorhouse, by not saving money in the bank or investing it in rental properties or other sound investments, opting instead to smoke $100 cigars with Arnold.
But hey - if some people want to poor in their pursuit of trying to look rich, so be it. That's not my style, but to each their own.
