THE INNER GAME OF BUSINESS, Part I Overview  Italian Renaissance sculptor and painter, Michelangelo, may have best captured the essence of owning a small business with his quote, “Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” If I’ve learned nothing else over more than a half-century of owning businesses and more than three decades as an advisor to other small business owners, it’s that business is not about the money we make, or the products and services we sell. At its core, business is a continual journey of personal growth, self-discovery, and fulfillment. As Michelangelo suggests in his quote, it’s about finding the work of art within the stone. As a smug, twenty-one-year-old, neophyte business owner there was no way I would have understood this. And I’m not sure I would have believed it even if I had. As it is, I’m embarrassed to admit how long it’s taken for this concept to seep into my adult consciousness. But after decades of working with hundreds of small business owners and their teams, studying heaps of research conducted by brilliant scholars, and by candidly addressing the guy I see