Last Tuesday was May 26th. Seven years to the day since I lost my mother.
It was also the day we held our first certification ceremony for our first public FlipWork™ cohort.
I did not plan that, but I do not think it was a coincidence.
Since our launch, FlipWork has served only enterprise clients. The transformation our participants experienced was something leaders inside those organizations could access, but not the solopreneur or the individual executive trying to figure out who they would become in an AI-powered world. We heard from those people constantly. They asked us, sometimes pleaded with us, to open the doors. So we did.
We built our first public cohort and launched it during Women's History Month. Research was showing that women are adopting AI at roughly 25% lower rates than their male counterparts, and that gap felt like the right place to start. FlipWorkOS is not for one kind of professional. We opened with that cohort, but we are not stopping there.
Last Tuesday, those participants completed the FlipWorkOS Sprint program and received their FlipWork™ Certified Agentic Leader certification.
I watched each one describe their journey. Every participant had started somewhere between skeptical and afraid. Every one of them left calling themselves an AI evangelist. One participant said they had stopped hiding from AI and started leading with it. Another said FlipWork did not teach them to use tools. It changed how they saw themselves.
I sat in that virtual room and felt something I have been searching for my whole career. I knew then that this was what my mother was talking about.
She was an educator. Early in her life, she helped launch a pre-bilingual program in her school district, designed to give young Spanish-speaking children a foundation in English before entering mainstream school. She saw a gap, and she built a bridge. What I understood only as a child watching her was that she believed no child should fall behind simply because they lacked the right foundation.
During her last month on this earth, she told me something I still return to. She said she knew that Nikki and I had been brought together for a bigger reason: for me to follow my passion and do what I was put on this earth to do.
Hearing her say that, in her final chapter, cut through every question I had ever carried about whether I was on the right path. She saw it before I did.
But she gave me something else that day. Something I was not ready to receive.
My mother was a deeply traditional Mexican-American woman, rooted in faith, family, and the way things had always been done. For a long time, the reality that her only daughter had not chosen a conventional life, and that Nikki was the person I had chosen to build it with, was not easy for her to hold. That is the honest truth, and I say it with love and without blame.
But she shifted. She did not simply accept us. She embraced us. She saw what Nikki and I were building together, and she recognized something real inside it. She told me we were meant to be together. Not as a concession. As a conviction. A woman rooted in tradition chose love over comfort and grew beyond what she had always known. That is not a small thing.
For me, it was everything.
She had a dicho she returned to throughout her life:
El que siembra, recoge. He who plants, reaps.
She planted seeds in children who might have fallen behind. She planted something in me that I carried into that FlipWork certification day last Tuesday, seven years after she left. I watched our participants describe who they had become, and I thought, "This is what she planted." This is what she saw.
I am following in her footsteps. Not in a classroom, but in the same spirit. Find the gap. Build the bridge. Believe in what people can become.
That is what FlipWork is. And this week, I want to invite you in.
Keep reading. There is a special invitation waiting for you at the end of this edition that I do not want you to miss.
THIS WEEK'S INSIGHTS
Simply using AI tools is no longer enough. What separates the professionals pulling ahead right now is not better tools or bigger budgets. It is whether they have changed how they actually work. Most have not. And most do not realize it yet.
1. Most organizations are using AI but not capturing value from it. The McKinsey State of AI 2025 found that meaningful, enterprise-wide bottom-line impact from AI remains rare. Only about 6% of companies qualify as AI high performers. Only 11% are using generative AI at scale. Almost all companies have invested in AI. Just 1% believe they have reached anything close to maturity.
2. The Anthropic Economic Index tracked millions of real AI interactions across every industry and found the same pattern: concentrated, shallow use. The January 2026 report found that usage clusters around a narrow set of tasks, primarily coding, and that in most occupations, workers have used AI for fewer than a quarter of the available work tasks. This includes the engineers and developers who build these tools. Think of it like a doctor who tells patients to lose weight while skipping their own workouts, or a hairdresser who transforms every client but cannot seem to get to their own hair. The people closest to the technology are not necessarily the ones using it best.
3. The shifts that matter most are behavioral, not technical. The WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025 found that nearly 40% of workers' core skills will need to change by 2030, and that 63% of employers already cite the skills gap as their primary barrier to transformation. The skills growing fastest are AI literacy and critical thinking. Two things no tool can hand you. You have to build them.
3 MYTHS TO REFRAME
These are the three beliefs I most often hear from smart professionals who think they are ahead of the AI curve.
Myth #1: "FlipWork™ is just another AI training."
Why we believe it: Professionals are saturated. Every week brings another webinar, another walkthrough, another how-to showing which button to click in which tool. After enough of that, fatigue sets in fast. When something new connected to AI shows up, the assumption is already there: more of the same.
Reframe: FlipWorkOS is not a training program. It is an operating system, a complete framework for how you think, work, and compete in an AI-powered world. Training hands you features. FlipWorkOS changes the underlying logic you use to make decisions about your career, your work, and your identity. Those are not the same thing. Our first public cohort launched during Women's History Month. Participants came in fatigued and afraid. They left, calling themselves evangelists. FlipWorkOS is not for one type of professional. It is for any leader ready to do the work that training never covers.
What to do: Before signing up for any AI program, ask one question: Does this change how I think, or just what I know? Knowledge transfer gets you started. Transformation is what sticks.
Myth #2: "You have to be technical to truly use AI."
Why we believe it: AI has historically felt like it was built for developers. The language around it still suggests you need a technical background to get the real benefit.
Reframe: The latest models require no code or software expertise. What they require is clear thinking and the ability to communicate what you need. The professionals thriving with AI right now are not the most technical people in the room. They are the most intentional. Your clarity of thought is not a limitation. It is your greatest advantage.
What to do: Stop waiting to understand the technology before engaging with it. Pick one task this week and work through it with AI as a partner, not a shortcut. Notice where your judgment still needs to stay in the loop. That noticing is the skill.
Myth #3: "I already use AI. I'm good."
Why we believe it: You open a chat window, ask questions, get answers, and revise a few things. That feels like fluency.
Reframe: Most professionals are not working with AI. They are visiting it. Real fluency means AI is woven into your workflows, not just consulted when convenient. Think of it like having a Lamborghini and only idling it in the driveway. The horsepower is there. You just have not taken it on the road. And as the Anthropic Economic Index data shows, even the people building AI tools are using it for only a fraction of what is possible in their work. True AI fluency means knowing what to fully delegate, what to partially delegate, and what your judgment must always own.
What to do: Write down five recurring tasks from your work week. For each one, ask: Have I ever genuinely handed this off to AI and evaluated the result? If the answer is no across the board, you have not yet explored what real integration feels like. That is your starting point.
TRY IT THIS WEEK (Micro Actions)
This week, the most useful thing you can deploy is not a prompt. It is one hour that could change how you work and how you live for the next decade.
On Thursday, June 5th at 3:00 PM Eastern, Nikki Barua and I are hosting a free, one-hour masterclass: Future-Proof Yourself: The AI Reinvention Masterclass for Executives and Entrepreneurs.
Simply using AI tools is no longer enough. This hour is about what comes after that. How you sustain it. How you truly integrate it into everything you do.
You will take the FlipFactor™ diagnostic to discover your AI archetype and see exactly where you stand today. From there, get a direct look at how future-ready leaders are building agentic workflows and shifting to the high-value work only they can do. Real executives and entrepreneurs who made this shift will share their stories, with the measurable results to back them up.
You will leave with the single move that separates the professionals merely using AI from the few being changed by it, and a first step you can take that same afternoon.
POWER TIP
Before you invest another hour learning a new AI tool, ask yourself one question: Have you fully used the tools you already have?
Most professionals have not. The gap is not access. It is integration. Start where you already are. Go deeper than you have gone before.
👉 What is one hour worth if it changes how you work for the next decade? Give us that hour this Thursday. It will be the best investment you make in yourself this week.
Closing Thought
Using AI is a start. Integrating it is a practice. Transforming through it is the work.
My mother built bridges so children would not fall behind. Last Tuesday, seven years to the day she left, I watched a room full of professionals describe who they had become. She planted. I am still reaping and still planting.
If this edition spoke to you, do not keep it to yourself. Share it with a leader in your circle who is ready for what comes after simply using AI. Better yet, bring them to Thursday's masterclass. Transformation is always better when you do not take the journey alone.
♻️ Share this with someone who is ready to stop scratching the surface with AI and start transforming through it.
¡Hasta la próxima, un abrazo fuerte! (Until next week, a big hug!)
Monica Marquez
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