Marty Brickey, a consultant and serial entrepreneur based in Orlando, Florida, has formalized a personal rule he says he has quietly practiced for years: he cycles four to five days a week and does not take strategy calls before that ride happens. The announcement is not a fitness plan, he says, but a sequencing rule that has shaped how he makes decisions since his early years running companies.
"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 happen before the ride is done. Purely informational calls are permitted. Anything that asks him to choose gets pushed until after. "A decision made at six in the morning, before I've cleared my head, is not the same decision I'd make at nine," he said. "I've tested this enough times to trust it."
Brickey has built and sold companies across media and gaming and has sat on boards where the pressure to answer quickly is constant. He traces the rule to a period when he lacked balance. "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 matters, he argues, because most executives treat exercise as something that moves when the week gets busy. He does the opposite. "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." He 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 habit was private 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. "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 said the pledge is measured by whether the rule 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 that 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."
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), and he holds a B.S. in Management from Missouri State University.
