Hey {{First name|there}}! It’s Aaron.

Most companies now pay for AI. Far fewer actually know how to use it.

That gap explains why some teams are quietly pulling ahead, while others see very little change.

Here's what's shifting in AI this week:

More than one million businesses now use OpenAI tools. The real story isn’t the number. It’s what changed between last year and this one.

AI stopped being something teams try and became something they rely on. Usage didn’t just grow; it settled into routine infrastructure. Message volume jumped eightfold. Reasoning usage per organization grew more than 300x. This is what AI at work looks like when it becomes non-optional.

For creators, this isn’t abstract. The same divide exists in our world: between people building AI into systems and people occasionally asking it for help.

OpenAI report’s productivity data exposes that gap clearly. Enterprise users save 40–60 minutes per day on average, but the biggest gains go to those who use AI consistently across multiple tasks.

Output didn’t improve because the model got smarter. It improved because usage became habitual.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth the report reveals. Even workers with full, paid AI access aren’t using it effectively. Frontier users send six times more messages than the median user and save dramatically more time.

The gap isn’t budget. It’s habit. Most people don’t lack AI tools; they lack an AI workflow. That gap widens as tools get more powerful. Frontier users aren’t just chatting more. They’re using reasoning, data analysis, search, and multi-step workflows.

Meanwhile, a meaningful share of enterprise users have never touched those features at all. Same access, very different outcomes. Early advantage doesn’t come from secret tools. It comes from disciplined use.

What’s driving the divide isn’t technical sophistication. It’s organizational readiness.
The report hints at this, but the implication is sharper than it lets on. As AI capability accelerates, the cost of poor habits compounds.

Teams without shared workflows fall further behind. Individuals who never move past surface-level use see diminishing returns. The ceiling rises, but only for people who build ladders.

This is where creators quietly have the advantage. Large organizations struggle with inertia, approvals, and fragmented ownership.

Creators don’t.

You don’t need executive sponsorship to standardize your workflow. You don’t need cross-functional buy-in to reuse a system that works. The same behaviors driving frontier performance in enterprises are easier to implement solo than at scale.

The winners in this shift are easy to spot. They turned AI into a default step, not a backup option. They built small systems: prompts tied to outcomes, repeatable research flows, content pipelines that reuse context instead of rebuilding it every time.

The losers are just as clear. People with access, subscriptions, and tools, but no habits to anchor them.

The enterprise AI gap isn’t technical. It’s cultural.

Organizations are paying for tools their people don’t know how to use well. Creators don’t have enterprise budgets, but they also don’t have enterprise bureaucracy. Build the system now, before bad habits calcify.

See you in the next one,

I hope you found value in today’s read. If you enjoy the content and want to support me, consider checking out today’s sponsor or buy me a coffee. It helps me keep creating great content for you.

Check out my previous posts here