Sandy Vilas is a professional business coach, president of Coach University, and co-author of “POWER NETWORKING 2nd Ed : 59 Secrets for Personal and Professional Success” along with Donna Fisher. The title concentrates on how to build personal relationships and capitalize on networking to build clients for your business.

This is a powerful tool for most types of business and even for social settings when it depends as much as who you know as what you know. I think we’ve all seen a coworker who advanced quickly when they weren’t as qualified as anyone else in the corporation, but the answer was they built a network of associates and capitalized on them to gain opportunities not available to others. For a small business owner this could also be a great help, and it’s a skill not often taught in traditional education. Sandy Vilas is on the right track in teaching these skills.

This type of books is certainly as important to the person climbing the corporate ladder as the owner of a local business who wants to expand or get new clients using the power of networking. One of the great truths is that people feel more comfortable doing business with people they know and like, and that can mean a huge difference where advertising dollars to gain that same number of clients could be cost prohibitive to a small business owner.

I think of the many celebrities, actors, and so on that aren’t necessarily the most talented, but are nevertheless extremely popular and that’s due to who they (or their agents) know in their business through networking. Overall, Sandy Vilas and Donna Fisher are established professionals in their field and personal and professional networking is something nobody can afford to overlook in todays competitive business and corporate environment.