Marty Brickey, a consultant and serial entrepreneur based in Orlando, Florida, has formalized a personal rule that he says has guided his decision-making for years: he does not take strategy calls before completing his morning bike ride. Brickey cycles four to five days a week and is now sharing the practice publicly, not as a fitness plan but as a sequencing rule that he believes other executives should consider.
“I used to think the calendar belonged to whoever asked for it first,” Brickey said. “Now the ride goes on the calendar before anything else does.” The rule is specific: no calls involving a decision, a negotiation, or a hire before the ride is done. Purely informational calls are permitted. Anything that requires him to choose is pushed until after the ride.
Brickey has built and sold companies across media and gaming and has served on boards where the pressure to answer quickly is constant. He argues that the order of a day changes the quality of the answers a person gives. “Early in my career I didn’t have balance,” he said. “That wasn’t a minor issue. It was a direct cause of a lot of loss. I don’t say that lightly.”
The practice is not about cycling specifically, Brickey said. “I’m not telling anyone to take up cycling,” he said. “I’m telling them to put something before the phone. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it happens first and nothing moves it.” He treats the ride as a fixed block rather than something that moves when the week gets busy. “The mistake people make is treating exercise like a reward for a clear schedule,” he said. “I treat it like the reason the schedule works at all.”
Brickey also credits long walks, separate from cycling, as a tool for pushing through self-doubt or a stuck decision. “When I hit a wall on a problem, I don’t sit at the desk and grind on it,” he said. “I walk it out. Most of the time the answer shows up somewhere in the middle of that walk, not at the start.”
Until now, the rule has been a private habit rather than a stated policy. Brickey said he is naming it publicly because he has watched other founders and executives skip the same step and pay for it later. He is committing to keep the rule in place and to talk about it when asked, rather than treating it as a private eccentricity. “If I say I have balance now, I should be able to point to what that actually looks like on a Tuesday,” he said. “This is what it looks like.”
Brickey measures the pledge by whether it survives a busy week, not a slow one. “Anyone can protect their morning when nothing is happening,” he said. “The test is whether you protect it when three people are waiting on you. That’s the only week that counts.” He expects to fail the rule occasionally and says failing is part of keeping it honest. “If I never break it, I’m probably not being tested enough,” he said. “The point isn’t perfection. The point is that the default goes back to the ride, not to the phone.”
The announcement matters because it challenges a common executive norm: reacting to the day’s first request rather than setting the day’s terms. For founders, board members, and managers, Brickey’s rule offers a concrete example of protecting decision quality by sequencing physical activity before high-stakes calls. It also signals a broader shift in how business leaders discuss balance—not as a vague aspiration but as a calendar rule that is either kept or broken. Brickey founded Layne Morgan Media in 2002 and later founded Flyover Entertainment, which included Secret Lair Studios, Grumpy Ninja Studios, and Studio Chi’n. He has invested in, advised, and served on boards for companies including Gas Powered Games (Gasworks Games). He holds a B.S. in Management from Missouri State University.
