Marty Brickey, a consultant and serial entrepreneur based in Orlando, Florida, has formalized a personal rule he says he has quietly followed for years: he does not take strategy calls before his morning bike ride. Brickey, who cycles four to five days a week, announced the rule publicly on October 17, 2026, framing it not as a fitness plan but as a sequencing rule that governs how he makes decisions.
The rule is specific. Brickey does not take calls that involve a decision, a negotiation, or a hire before the ride is done. Calls that are purely informational are permitted. Anything that asks him to choose is pushed until after he has ridden. “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.”
Brickey has built and sold companies across media and gaming and has served on boards where the pressure to answer quickly is constant. He says 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.” He added: “A decision made at six in the morning, before I’ve cleared my head, is not the same decision I’d make at nine. I’ve tested this enough times to trust it.”
The practice matters beyond Brickey’s own schedule because it challenges a common executive habit: treating exercise or personal time as a reward for a clear calendar rather than a fixed precondition for one. “The mistake people make is treating exercise like a reward for a clear schedule,” Brickey 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, saying most answers show up in the middle of a walk rather than at the start.
Brickey said he is naming the rule 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 he expects to fail the rule occasionally and that failing it is part of keeping it honest. “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.”
For founders, executives, and boards, the implication is a measurable standard for what “balance” means in practice. Brickey said the pledge is measured by whether the rule survives a busy week, not a slow one. “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 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 holds a B.S. in Management from Missouri State University.
