Odds are that as a business owner, you are not getting eight hours of nightly shuteye that experts agree you need. Sleep studies show results that are fairly consistent on the amount of sleep required, despite what you might hear from an occasional entrepreneur who brags that they only require a few hours of z's every night.

Here's why sleep matters to your business and your bottom line. 

Sleep helps inspire.

According to a 2007 survey by office-supply chain Staples, 51% of entrepreneurs say that they regularly dream about work. Of those, 70% report implementing their work-related dreams.

It raises your game-level.

"You can turn a smart person into an idiot just by over-tiring him," says Peter Capelli, head of the Center for Human Resources at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in Philadelphia.

It improves memory and learning.

... new Berkeley studies show that . . . Memory improves during sleep, so that if you get a full seven or eight hours' slumber tonight, your recall of all that happened today will be 20% to 30% sharper than it is immediately after the day's events occur. No one is sure yet why this is so.

It helps you from getting illnesses such as diabetes or cancer so that you can stay in the game longer.

A 2008 research project at the University of Chicago's medical school kept young, healthy volunteers awake for all but four hours a night for six nights running. The result: The levels of subjects' hormones shifted - in particular a hormone called leptin that affects appetite. They became ravenously hungry, scarfing down pizza and ice cream long after they would have felt full normally, and their blood sugar shot up to pre-diabetic levels - an ominous result after less than one week of inadequate sleep.

. . .  the World Health Organization (WHO) has gathered data from around the globe showing that sleep deprivation depresses the immune system, to the point where WHO is considering labeling chronic sleep deprivation a carcinogen, comparable to tobacco and asbestos.

The conclusion? If you want you and your franchise at peak performance, then sleep. Your employees will thank you for it.

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Read the complete article at Fortune Small Business