The Most Powerful (Legal) Performance Enhancer You’re Probably Ignoring or Neglecting

Listen to an expanded conversation between Bart and Sunny around this newsletter:

What if we told you there was a 100% legal, free, and scientifically proven performance-enhancing drug that:

✅ Boosts brain function
✅ Supercharges muscle recovery
✅ Enhances skill performance by 20-30%
✅ Increases testosterone and growth hormone
✅ Strengthens your immune system
✅ Improves memory and decision-making

And the cost?? What would it be worth to you? Would you take it?

According to Dr. Matt Walker, neuroscientist and sleep expert, this “drug” already exists—it’s called sleep.

And yet, most people completely ignore it in pursuit of the grind.

The Ultimate Cheat Code for High Performers

Dr. Walker, on The Joe Rogan Experience, called sleep the most powerful legal performance-enhancing drug in existence. Here’s why:

🔹 Skill learning or performance improves by 20-30% after sleep. Your brain replays what you’ve learned overnight, refining it while you rest. That’s right: practice doesn’t make perfect, practice with a good night of sleep is what makes perfect. If you come back the next day, you’re 20-30% better in terms of your skilled performance than where you were at the end of your practice session the day before.

🔹 Memory is solidified during deep sleep. If you don’t sleep, your brain doesn’t store what you studied, practiced, or experienced.

🔹 Sleep deprivation cuts stamina by 30%. Ever hit a wall in your workouts or workday? You might be running on fumes, not lack of willpower. If you are getting 6 hours of sleep or less per night, your time to physical exhaustion drops by up to 30%. You can spend all of your time training for a sport. You may be in perfect condition! But if you get six hours of sleep the night before you compete, you’re going to be physically exhausted much earlier than you normally would be.

🔹 Lack of sleep tanks your immune system. Just one night of 4-5 hours of sleep drops your natural killer cells (which fight off viruses and cancer) by 70%.

🔹 Men who sleep less than 5 hours a night have the testosterone levels of someone 10 years older. You’re literally aging yourself when you skimp on rest.

🔹 After just 10 days of 6 hours of sleep per night, your brain functions like you’re legally drunk. The scary part? Most people don’t even realize how impaired they are...

The Challenger Disaster—A Tragic Lesson in Deprivation

We tend to think of sleep as optional—until the consequences hit hard.

In 1986, NASA launched the Challenger space shuttle with seven astronauts aboard. 73 seconds after takeoff, the shuttle exploded, killing everyone on board.

Investigators later found that one of the key factors in the disaster was sleep deprivation.

The engineers responsible for the final launch decision had been working on just two hours of sleep the night before. Two hours. Their exhausted brains made critical mistakes—and it cost lives.

Now, maybe you’re not launching a space shuttle. But if billion-dollar decisions with human lives on the line were made worse because of lack of sleep, what are the chances that your daily decisions—your business, your health, your relationships—are suffering because you’re running on empty?

If something as small as lost sleep can alter history, imagine what chronic sleep deprivation is doing to your performance, leadership, and decision-making every single day.

Sleep isn’t just about feeling rested—it’s about making sure your brain is working at its peak when it matters most.

AND HERE’S THE KICKER! READY?

You Can’t “Catch Up” on Sleep! 😲 

No, sleeping in on the weekend doesn’t fix a week of late nights. Dr. Walker explains that sleep debt is cumulative. Once lost, it’s lost.

So when we burn the candle at both ends, we’re operating at a constant disadvantage—slower thinking, weaker recovery, poorer decision-making.

Why the Best in the World Sleep More, Not Less

LeBron James sleeps 10+ hours a night.
Roger Federer? Same.
Even Jeff Bezos swears by getting a full 8 hours to make the best business decisions.

Elite performers don’t grind themselves into exhaustion. They prioritize sleep as a non-negotiable business decision.

Because when you sleep well, you:
✅ Think faster
✅ Recover quicker
✅ Make better decisions
✅ Perform at a higher level

And when you don’t? You’re operating at a deficit, no matter how much caffeine you slam or how mentally tough you think you are.

3 Ways to Optimize Sleep (Starting Tonight)

1️⃣ Set a bedtime alarm. You wouldn’t randomly decide when to wake up—so why do that with bedtime? Treat it like an appointment with your future success.

2️⃣ Ditch the screens before bed. Blue light from phones and TVs suppresses melatonin, making it harder to fall asleep. Replace scrolling with reading or journaling.

3️⃣ Get morning sunlight. Exposing your eyes to natural light within 30 minutes of waking helps regulate your circadian rhythm, making it easier to fall asleep at night.

Want to Play Full Out? Master Your Sleep.

You train hard. You work hard. But if you’re not recovering just as hard, you’re leaving massive potential on the table.

Want to play full out? Sleep full out. It’s the single most powerful upgrade you can make for your brain, body, and success.

Hit reply and tell us—how many hours do you sleep each night? Let’s see who’s actually playing full out. 🙂 

Life Updates:

• We made it back from Boise last Sunday! Monday we shot some reels for Bart’s Instagram account. Mercedes shoots them so Sunny gets to hang out with baby Lyla for a few hours!

• We have hit the pickleball courts about four times already this week… let’s go! We have so much fun playing together!

• Xander and Sunny went to saxophone and jazz piano lessons on Wednesday night. Xander’s teacher gave Xander some really great insights on perfectionism, overcoming fear, and leaning into low stakes situations to gain confidence when stakes are higher. We don’t have enough room here to go into the full discussion, but man - how much gratitude we have for mentors who shine a light on really important challenges that can hold us back from reaching our potential. So much gratitude!

• Bart was supposed to rope Wednesday night, but ended up with a broken windshield wiper that he had to take care of… and somehow ended up eating stake and hanging out over BY the roping arena but not IN the roping arena. Haha.

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