When Tony Cashman was growing up in West Hartford, he played on the same youth baseball team as Bill Ryan Jr., whose father was then a vice president and general manager at WFSB Channel 3.
Cashman didn’t think much about the connection at the time. But years later, his father did. While attending Stonehill College during the late 1980s with his heart set on going into sports broadcasting, Cashman’s father suggested that he write a letter to Ryan, who had since moved to Florida, asking for his advice about breaking into broadcasting.
That letter would one day open the doors to the career Cashman now enjoys.
Ryan responded to his letter, and asked Chris Rohrs, then the general manager at WFSB, to meet with Cashman.
Rohrs’ advice; Go into ad sales.
But Cashman was determined to go into sports broadcasting.
“I was pretty starry-eyed,” he said. “I wanted to be a sportscaster, the next Chris Berman.”
Throughout college, Cashman worked at various part-time jobs and internships in the field, including a part-time job at a local Brockton, Mass., newspaper.
But his best gig was an internship at WLVI Channel 56 in Boston. “They sent me in a cab to all the Celtics and Bruins games to get sound bites from the players after the game. At 21, to go to the press box and ask questions, it was just an amazing experience. It was a dream come true,” he said.
But his most profitable job came from working on construction during winter breaks. He earned union wages — his father was the manager of a labor union — which gave Cashman a sizeable paycheck that far outweighed anything his peers made. It allowed him to pay for half of his college education, Cashman recalled.
“I think working construction had the most significant impact on my life,” he reflected. “It taught me the value of an education and the value of a dollar. I think it made me street-smart. In that environment, as a college kid working at a construction site six to seven days a week, 12 hours a day, it’s not just physical labor. … The experience of working construction really opens your eyes to a whole new world. I learned that I wanted to do work with my mind, not my back.”
That said, he reconsidered Rohr’s suggestion. Although he had three part-time reporting jobs at the time — at the Hartford Courant writing sports roundups, offering play-by-play high school commentary for a small radio station, WBIS, in Bristol and also selling ads for the station — Cashman went back to visit Rohr at WFSB.
Rohr hired him as a sales representative, and Cashman discovered that he enjoyed and found success in advertising sales at Channel 3.
That letter from Bill Ryan, introducing him to Rohrs, changed Cashman’s career path in another important way. While selling ads at WFSB (yes, he did eventually take Ryan’s advice), Cashman struck up a friendship with another sales representative, Ed Katz. After a few years of selling ads at Channel 3, the two decided to startup their own advertising agency.
Just 25 years old, Cashman said he was a little naïve about the risk and commitment needed to run your own company. “I think you have to be,” he said.
Fifteen years later, the two continue to operate their advertising and public relations company, Cashman & Katz Integrated Communications in Glastonbury. The two also founded Connecticut In Focus, a separate company that facilitates focus group research. They employ 23 people.
