by Mark E. Waterbury

The entertainment world was in Susan Cobb's blood. Born and raised in Atlanta, her father worked with the sponsorship aspects of the company he was employed by, and was also friends with a number of entertainers including actors and musicians. "I just kind of grew up being involved in special events,"Susan recalls. "My dad was always very involved in it and it carried over for me, and I knew very early that I wanted to do something in the music or entertainment industry."Susan took acting and dancing classes while growing up and was the person who always did things such as planning birthday parties, the neighborhood Halloween haunted house and Christmas plays. She became involved with special event committees in high school and when she attended college at the University of Cincinnati, she also was active booking events and shows for fraternities, sororities and festivals. "I am a very high energy person and I've always been a person who enjoyed the larger then life aspect of pulling off the event of a lifetime. I'm very detail-oriented and also an outgoing people person, but even going back to when I was young, my career direction was in entertainment."

After attaining her marketing degree, Susan went to work for a company called Computer Center, who was at the time the exclusive Apple Computer distributor in the South. Through a connection with Jennifer Burns of the Burns Group, she started working with racing events in the Southeast, first with Road Atlanta, and later with Atlanta Motor Speedway. "Jennifer has always been a huge inspiration to me because she runs a really successful company here in Atlanta. She does a tremendous amount of work and she's a freelancer. I had a lot of good exposure from her across the board for working with different types of events." Susan originally started working part time with promotions, and then became involved full time with such aspects as special events and corporate hospitality as well as booking the entertainment for race weekends and most importantly, sponsorships. "I've always excelled at going out and getting sponsorships, and when you are putting on events, that is the biggest component to look for. Not everybody can sell sponsorships and when you go to someone to get a lot of sponsorship money, you have to have that same level of enthusiasm as you hope all of the event attendees will."

After working for several years in the racing business itself, Susan went into a joint venture with two other women. With one of her partners based in L.A. and the other in London, Torque was a consulting firm working with the racing industry as well as entertainment entities on both national and international levels. They developed a network of contacts and supported the company with a client base that did special events for races, trade shows and other special events. During that timeframe, Susan was also director of sales and marketing for a chain of nightclubs in the Southeast called Baja Beach Club. After several years of successful operations for Torque, both of her partners were married and started families. With the business so travel intensive, this left Susan in a position where she could not really continue on with the business by herself. "I decided to take a hiatus for about two years. My mother had just passed away and after my partners quit to go into family life, I was kind of at a loss as to what I was going to do. I had just been going non-stop for so long I needed a little time off."

After spending six months in the Bahamas and another six in a tiny, bare bones cabin on the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska, she came back to Florida where she previously lived for awhile. Around Christmas 2000, she was visiting friends in Atlanta, and one night over some drinks, one of her friends told her about a job opening she saw on the internet for the head of sales and marketing at Atlanta's Hard Rock Cafe. Susan sent in a resume, and in a little over a week, she landed the job. The Hard Rock was in Atlanta about eight years at that point, and the live entertainment was rather spotty. It had done quite well during the 1996 Olympics, and soon after that, purchased a space next door to use exclusively for live music and special events. "That room was kind of hit or miss, and because of budget cuts and the economy, they didn't put much into promoting that side. And the first day I walked in and saw it, I thought it would be the perfect live music venue to compete with the others in town. I knew the potential it had, and through a lot of support from my general manager, we pooled our resources and I contacted the sponsors and people I had known from my race days."The room is called the Velvet Underground, and in the two years Susan has been there it has been redone with a brand new stage, production and curtains, bringing it to a level where it is one of the better rooms in town, and has become a cornerstone for helping revamp downtown Atlanta. The room has regional and national bands, but its main focus is the local musicians. "Hard Rock's direction now is more artist development, and that is the premise that we are taking to bring these local artists out, get them noticed by the labels and get them recognition. We are putting together multi-city Hard Rock tours for these bands who otherwise may not be able to tour away from home."

Hard Rock corporate is very supportive of what happens in the local clubs on a corporate level, but they also allow Hard Rock Atlanta quite a bit of autonomy because they are one of the few Hard Rocks that have a separate venue. Susan and her general manager are strong supporters of Central Atlanta Progress and the Downtown Neighborhood Association, sponsoring events and doing other things to assist the rebirth of downtown Atlanta as a vibrant area. Susan is really enjoying her work which once again lies within her life's passion of the entertainment field, and has a core satisfaction to its mostly intensive daily workings. "I love meeting people and I love the energy level of it. It's great to be involved with a company that is global and brings as much to the table as it does. For anybody who wants to get into this type of business as a career, they should try to get an internship at a booking agency or venue or radio station, because if you can get in at that level and really get those basics you can see all facets of the business. This career is not for everybody because when you get into a position like mine, it's pretty much of a 24-7 deal. I am always working for the Hard Rock no matter what I seem to be doing. You are always networking because that is what this business is all about. It's who you know and being out there and putting a name with a face and people being able to identify who you are in conjunction with what you do."

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Susan Cobb's advice for musicians:

"I think the biggest thing with bands is they play out too much. They are too caught up into playing too many shows when they should be selective and try to build their audience and not do too many shows too close together in the same market where they end up diluting their draw. If someone sees you play at a suburban bar one night, they are probably not going to go see you in a downtown bar the next night. And professionalism is probably the number one thing that I look for in a band that wants to book a show here. Bands whose members are professional from the time when they call to book the show until the time that they finish the show and load out their gear. What's missing for a lot of bands is that they have not reached a level to act like rock stars and expect to be treated like rock stars...but they do! A little humility goes a long way with musicians trying to make it."