How to Reclaim Your Agency and Lead with Intention

In a special edition of The Woodard Report Podcast, Joe Woodard takes the stage at the annual Practice Advancement Breakfast during Scaling New Heights 2025. Joe shares a message every accounting professional needs to hear: your days are numbered—so make them count.

Teach us to number our days

Joe opens by reflecting on the wisdom in the ancient lyric, “Teach us to number our days so that we may have wisdom.” With humor and honesty, he explains how aging has brought the phrase into sharper focus:

“Barring some amazing age-reversal scientific breakthrough, I’ve got more days behind me than ahead of me,” he says. “We need to be sobered up if we’re going to make the most of the time we have.”

Joe challenges the audience to embrace the urgency and intentionality they applied to preparing for Scaling New Heights—and apply it to life itself.

The word of the conference: agency

The core theme of the address is agency: “the capacity to act freely and intentionally, harnessing one’s strengths and opportunities to shape meaningful outcomes while transcending psychological, relational, and social barriers.”

Joe introduces agency as the key to reclaiming control over our lives and our businesses. He draws from inspiring real-life stories—including Erin Brockovich, the Jamaican bobsled team, and Winston Churchill—to illustrate how agency propels people to overcome tremendous odds.

Four A’s that define a person of agency

Joe outlines four characteristics that define a person of agency:

1. 1. Autonomy – “You must move from being dependent to being independent,” Joe says, referencing Stephen Covey’s seven habits and the journey toward personal responsibility.
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3. 2. Awareness – Distinguish between your circle of concern and your circle of influence. Joe warns against the paralysis caused by obsessing over things we can’t control.
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5. 3. Aspiration – “Begin with the end in mind,” Joe urges, asking the audience to consider not just long-term legacies, but also immediate goals.
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7. 4.Action – Agency requires action, even when it’s hard. “Direction, not intention, determines destination,” he reminds us.

And yes, there’s a little humor woven in too as Joe quotes the Spice Girls: “Tell me what you want, what you really, really want,” to illustrate the importance of aligning surface-level goals with deeper desires.

Reclaiming Your Power

Throughout the keynote, Joe stresses that agency is not a one-time achievement but a daily battle against fear, distraction, and self-doubt. But the reward is immense: a life and practice led with clarity, freedom, and purpose.

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