The Hardest Part of Solo MOps Isn't the Workload. It's the Silence.

Fast-paced rooms. Endless requests. A to-do list that breeds while you sleep. That's the part of being a solo MOps person everyone expects. What nobody warns you about is the silence.

Chloe Pott has lived this. Founding MOps hire at Lokalise. Founder of Pocket Nibbles Consulting. Three-time Adobe Marketo Champion. Co-lead of the European chapter of the Marketing Ops Community. And one of the most open voices in European MOps about the human side of this work.

The loneliness no one warns you about

When I asked Chloe what nobody talks about in solo MOps, she didn't reach for the tools or the workload.

"The part people don't talk about enough is how lonely it can feel. There's nobody in the organization who speaks the same language."

That's the part that stuck with me. Because every solo MOps person I know has hit that wall. And most of them think it's a personal failing. It isn't. It's structural. There's no one to bounce ideas off. No one to tell you whether your dashboard makes sense or your attribution model is built on sand.

Yes, but

Chloe ran an informal LinkedIn poll a couple of years ago. The two biggest challenges for small MOps teams came back almost in unison: prioritization, and saying no. Those aren't separate problems. They're the same problem.

Without a roadmap, you can't say no. Every request looks equally urgent because nothing is anchored. With a roadmap, you can say no politely. Chloe's formulation is "yes, but." Yes, I can help with the ABM tool. But the CRM rework you asked for last week has to move first.

This isn't soft skills dressed up. It's structural protection.

"Saying no with pride and dignity is something I think everyone needs to learn."

The job vs. the environment

There's a temptation to call marketing ops a high-burnout role. Chloe pushed back hard on that, and I think she's right. She's been through burnout. She's been through postpartum depression and stepped away to recover. She's had toxic managers and toxic workplaces.

But she doesn't blame MOps for it.

"I would hate to say marketing ops is a burnout risk. I love working in marketing ops. The environment around it is what causes burnout."

That distinction matters. Because if MOps itself is the problem, you have to leave the field. If the environment is the problem, you change the environment. Or you change companies. She wishes she'd left some jobs sooner. The line that's stayed with me:

"It's just a job. It really is only a job."

Find your cheerleader

Internal allies don't have to understand MOps. They just have to advocate for it. Chloe's cheerleaders have come from sales ops, customer support, product. People who connected with her as a human first, then connected their goals to hers later. Because in any organization with a go-to-market function, the underlying goal is the same: revenue. Find the people who get that, and you've found your translators.

And outside the building: the community. Chloe co-leads the European chapter of the Marketing Ops Community alongside Mihai Bejgu and Odd Morten Sørensen. What started as coffee chats two and a half years ago is now a network spanning Norway, Romania, France, the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, and growing fast. The first European-focused MOps summit lands in Barcelona in April 2027.

If you're a solo MOps person reading this, the community already exists. You just have to walk in.

Skip the certifications

Chloe said something I want every hiring manager in MOps to read twice.

"I would much rather hire someone on a human level and then teach them the tech skills later."

Platform certifications, Marketo, HubSpot, Salesforce, get less weight in her hiring than curiosity, ambition, and a willingness to fail. The platforms are 80% the same anyway. Pattern recognition does the heavy lifting. The MOps hire that lasts is the one who asks why the system was built that way before they start changing it.

The bottom line

The story Chloe tells about thriving as a small MOps team isn't really about tools, frameworks, or playbooks. It's about people. A roadmap to anchor your "yes, but." A cheerleader inside to vouch for you when nobody else does. A community outside that knows what you actually do, and proves you're not the only one.

"Reach out for help. We would love to brainstorm with you and help you feel less lonely."

The room is bigger than you think.

Find Chloe on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/chloepott