A consultant and serial entrepreneur based in Orlando, Florida, is turning a long-private habit into a stated policy, and in doing so is making an argument about how executives should structure the hours in which they make their most consequential choices. Marty Brickey said he cycles four to five days a week and does not take strategy calls before that ride happens, a sequencing rule he has decided to name publicly rather than keep to himself.
Brickey, who has built and sold companies across media and gaming and has served on boards where the pressure to answer quickly is constant, said the practice was not conceived as a fitness plan. It is, he said, a rule about order. "I used to think the calendar belonged to whoever asked for it first," he said. "Now the ride goes on the calendar before anything else does." The distinction matters because the rule is narrow and specific: no calls involving a decision, a negotiation, or a hire before the ride is finished. Purely informational calls are permitted. Anything requiring him to choose is pushed until afterward.
The implications reach beyond personal scheduling. Brickey's claim is that the sequence in which a day unfolds changes the quality of the answers a leader gives, and he frames his own history as evidence. "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 described the difference in concrete terms: "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."
In practice, Brickey treats the ride as a fixed block rather than something that shifts when the week gets busy, riding rain or shine. "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 working through self-doubt or a stalled decision, saying the answer usually arrives somewhere in the middle of a walk rather than at its start.
Brickey said he is naming the rule because he has watched other founders and executives skip the same step and pay for it later. His advice is deliberately not about cycling. "I'm telling them to put something before the phone," he said. "It doesn't matter what it is, as long as it happens first and nothing moves it." He said he expects to break the rule occasionally and considers that 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."
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.
