
My Favorite Mistake: Business Lessons from Failures and Success
Burnout to Breakthrough: How La Tonya Roberts Found Harmony by Leaving Corporate Consulting
My guest for Episode #309 of the My Favorite Mistake podcast is La Tonya Roberts, the founder and CEO of Harmony Consulting Group. La Tonya is a fractional COO, HR consultant, and executive coach who helps women entrepreneurs scale their service-based businesses from six to seven figures through systems, strategic planning, and operational excellence. Before launching her firm, she built her career at top consulting organizations like Deloitte and Booz Allen, where she developed deep expertise in organizational change and operational leadership.
EPISODE PAGE WITH VIDEO, TRANSCRIPT, AND MORE
In this episode, La Tonya shares her favorite mistake—staying too long in roles she had outgrown, taking on too much responsibility, and ultimately burning out. After experiencing both physical and emotional fatigue, including a dramatic moment that sent her to the hospital, she realized that her tendency to overfunction in high-demand environments was unsustainable. Those hard lessons eventually led her to rediscover joy in her work by launching her own business focused on operational harmony and intentional growth.
La Tonya explains how she now helps founders—especially women—build scalable, process-driven businesses without sacrificing their well-being. She also shares how she uses tools like ChatGPT to automate repetitive tasks and increase efficiency, both in her business and her clients'. We also talk about the importance of aligning systems, people, and strategy, and how La Tonya’s clients benefit from her experience in both large enterprises and nimble startups.
Listeners will hear practical advice on avoiding burnout, building systems that run without you, and why "work-life harmony" may be a better goal than elusive "balance."