Summary - Engine Room Podcast 54 – Angus Stevenson

It can be easy to overlook the complexities of rural wealth management—particularly the intricacies that arise when farming families seek to safeguard their financial futures. Often, those in agriculture have accumulated extensive assets, not just in dollar value but in the form of farmland that spans generations. Their concerns go beyond market returns: they involve legacy, tradition, community, environmental stewardship, and family cohesion.

Financial planner Angus Stevenson of Terra Bella Wealth understands these nuances at a granular level. Growing up in central west New South Wales, Angus developed a profound respect for the resilience and dedication of agricultural families. From fencing during holidays, to a gap-year stint working in an abattoir, to building a professional advisory firm dedicated primarily to farming families, his trajectory underlines a deep commitment to serving a sector that underpins much of Australia’s economy and identity.

In a conversation originally hosted by Andrew “Roxy” Rocks on the “Engine Room” podcast, Angus describes how he arrived at financial advice, the importance of ethics and professionalism in his work, and why genuine connection and empathy matter as much as prudent investment returns. The following article expands on that conversation—offering practical insights into the ethics and artistry of serving multigenerational farming families.

1. From Central West Beginnings to Professional Wealth Advice

Angus’s origins in the rural heartland informed his entire outlook on life and business. Growing up in a region shaped by the cycles of sowing, rainfall, and harvest developed a sense of grit, perseverance, and community-mindedness. While city dwellers might see farmland in purely financial terms, Angus learned, firsthand, that agricultural assets are more than lines on a balance sheet—they represent the blood and sweat of multiple generations.

After leaving boarding school, he initially eschewed the typical overseas gap-year experience for twelve months working at Fletcher’s abattoir in Dubbo. While laboring on the A-grade boning team was physically taxing, the experience gave Angus clarity: this was not a long-term career path for him, but it was a transformative life lesson. He learned to value hard work, appreciate the importance of consistent discipline, and deepen his empathy for people in the agricultural supply chain.

That perspective paved the way for a shift toward financial services. Angus began coaching rowing at Canberra Girls Grammar, where a parent—an executive with an interest in the local rugby team—introduced him to the world of wealth management. This fortunate connection led Angus to his first major industry role at Asset Wealth Management in Canberra. He relished the firm’s self-licensed status and the chance to participate in investment committee discussions at an early stage. Surrounded by experienced mentors who valued integrity and genuinely cared for client outcomes, Angus immersed himself in the finer points of portfolio construction and client engagement.

He then moved to a regionally focused wealth management practice, aiming to bring the same level of institutional-grade investment thinking to the farm gate. As he tells it, many rural clients still gravitated toward a “stockbroking mindset” or purely Australian equities–based approach. He sensed an unmet need for a broader, more sophisticated palette of investment options—especially for families heavily invested in land. The question, as he put it, was “How do we help farmers preserve and grow wealth while navigating droughts, fluctuating commodity prices, and intergenerational transitions?”

This vision was crystalized by a later mentor, Grant, at Allegro Wealth, who encouraged Angus to go out on his own and build a specialized, ethics-focused advisory business. Grant recognized Angus’s enthusiasm and unwavering commitment, telling him he would someday regret not creating a firm underpinned by his own unique approach. Thus, Terra Bella Wealth was born.

2. Founding Terra Bella Wealth: A Commitment to Ethical, Holistic Service

When Angus decided to establish Terra Bella Wealth, he did so with twin motivations:

1. Extend high-quality, institutional-grade advice to regional families—especially those who might find it cumbersome or intimidating to seek out big-city financial firms.
2. Do so with an unwavering commitment to ethics, authenticity, and true partnership.

The name “Terra Bella” itself pays homage to the heritage properties once owned by Angus’s family—an acknowledgment that the bonds between people and land run deep. Many of his current clients have known his parents and grandparents for decades, so trust is built on shared history. Yet the trust continues to flourish because of Angus’s fervent belief that ethics are not merely theoretical guidelines, but everyday practices that drive how advice is given, how fees are structured, how referrals are handled, and how family conversations are facilitated.

In Angus’s words, “We want to be on the same side of the table as our clients. We want them to see we’re as invested in their success as they are.” This desire translates into:

• Transparent Fee Structures: Terra Bella often asks clients, “What do you think is fair?” Angus points out that farming families, who have worked tirelessly to build their wealth over decades, appreciate the respect and honesty in that question. Surprisingly, many clients volunteer a fee higher than what Terra Bella would have proposed. This underscores the power of transparency in forging genuine partnership.
• Long-Term Orientation: Because farmland is inherently illiquid and farming incomes can be volatile, Angus’s advice often centers on balancing short- and medium-term cashflow needs with five-, ten-, or even twenty-year legacy planning. Private investments, private equity, and various alternative asset structures may feature heavily in a portfolio. Rather than chase short-term trends, Terra Bella focuses on capital preservation and, crucially, maintains the principle that “we want to avoid dipping into principal, and instead live off generated income, following the endowment model.”
• Ethical Integration: For these families—custodians of the land—sustainability and responsible stewardship are integral to how they conduct themselves. They need professional guidance that reflects their desire to leave the farm, and the world, better than they found it. Angus’s approach is to measure each investment’s role in a portfolio from more angles than mere return. Factors such as environmental impact, alignment with a family’s values, and the social effect of a company’s operations also matter.

3. Navigating Intergenerational Complexity—Ethically and Professionally

Few things in financial advice are as fraught with difficulty, or as rich in possibility, as intergenerational wealth transfers. Especially in farming communities, legacies often extend across multiple generations. Parents and grandparents hold a deep desire to pass land and wealth on in a way that is both fair and sustainable. Meanwhile, adult children may have diverging visions: one child might actively farm, another might prefer a career in the city, and a third might want to take the land in a different direction entirely.

Angus has developed strategies to address these tensions head-on:

1. Single A3 Fact-Find
   At the outset of family engagements, Terra Bella transforms a lengthy fact-find process into a concise, single-page (A3) map of all relevant details: assets, debts, family relationships, trust structures, and so forth. This visual clarity often illuminates pathways—whether it involves shifting funds between entities or understanding how farmland, personal wealth, and other assets interrelate.
2. Acknowledging “Warm” vs. “Cold” Gifting
   Angus references the idea of gifting assets or wealth “with a warm heart or a cold hand.” Sometimes parents prefer to keep control of assets until the end of their lives (“cold hand”), thereby reducing the risk that adult children misuse the funds. Other times, they see the value in helping children and grandchildren earlier, “with a warm heart,” when financial support can maximize opportunities—like paying for private schooling or supporting the next generation’s first home purchase. In either case, Terra Bella’s role is to ensure the family understands the long-term financial implications and remains on solid, respectful ground.
3. Equity Is Not Always Equal
   “Fairness is not the same thing as mathematical equality,” Angus frequently points out. If a family has three children, and only one continues the farming tradition, that individual may need a larger share of the asset base so the farm can remain financially viable. This imbalance can cause tension. By focusing on communication—making “silent conversations visible,” in Angus’s words—Terra Bella helps each sibling and spouse see how these decisions support the enduring health of the family legacy.
4. Cold Spots Exercise
   Angus introduced a method he calls “cold spots,” in which every family member reflects on something they look forward to—a regular ritual that brings them joy. For one farmer, it might be the hopeful moment just after sowing seed, for another it might be the ritual of walking the dog at dawn. The matriarch of the family might say she looks forward to seeing everyone around the dinner table without waiting for a holiday or funeral. According to Angus, shining a light on these micro-moments of happiness reminds families that meaningful wealth planning is not about living or dying by spreadsheet rows; it is about preserving—and expanding—the experiences that bring families closer. That perspective helps guide decisions about asset allocation, liquidity, and any transitions that need to happen.

4. Ethics in Action: How Terra Bella Upholds Professional Standards

Building trust in financial services is an ongoing challenge worldwide. Stories of misconduct or narrow product selling can cast a shadow on honest advisors who take their fiduciary responsibility seriously. Angus’s approach demonstrates a template for ethical and professional behavior that any advisory firm could adapt:

1. Deep Client-Centric Collaboration
   Whether it is dealing with large bank managers, agronomists, accountants, or attorneys, Terra Bella ensures that each partner understands the client’s holistic goals. This team-oriented ethos acknowledges that no single person has all the answers. By collaborating extensively with other professionals, Angus safeguards the client’s interests above any single firm’s bottom line.
2. Respect for Vulnerability
   In an industry where clients disclose sensitive financial, emotional, and family information, great advisors handle these disclosures with delicacy. Angus underscores that many family heads, particularly older generations, feel apprehensive discussing net worth or succession plans. The Terra Bella team strives to ensure clients know their confidences are safeguarded and honored—not merely mined for business advantage.
3. Removing Conflicts of Interest
   A hallmark of Terra Bella’s structure is that it focuses on wholesale/adviser services designed for high-net-worth and sophisticated investors, especially in the agricultural space. By operating through flexible licensing arrangements that emphasize a transparent, fixed-fee or mutually agreed-upon remuneration model, Angus aims to reduce typical conflicts of interest. He also keeps a close eye on private debt or equity deals, ensuring that clients understand the associated risks and have outside, third-party assessments (such as from asset consultants or research houses like Lonsec or Zenith) before committing capital.
4. Mentoring and Staff Inclusiveness
   Professionalism begins in-house. Angus invests time in mentoring his associate adviser, Rob, and includes Rob’s spouse in performance evaluations so the entire family’s goals can be supported. This is an extension of Terra Bella’s broader culture of collaboration—if employees are valued holistically, they can better serve clients with empathy. Moreover, Angus encourages his team to join industry communities, such as Ensemble (formerly XY Adviser), and to share ideas with other firms. This fosters a broader network of knowledge and upholds a high bar for ethical conduct across the profession.

5. The Agriculture-Focused Model: Why It Works

An unwavering focus on agriculture is not simply a business decision for Terra Bella—it is a natural outgrowth of Angus’s life experience and passions. The firm’s success among farming families offers several insights for other advisors considering or already serving niche markets:

• Cultural Familiarity: Farming is more than an occupation; it is often an identity. Understanding how sowing, harvesting, drought, debt cycles, and livestock rotation affect cashflow is vital. A city-based advisor might see farmland only as real estate, whereas Angus perceives it as a dynamic business.
• Long-Term Perspective: Farmers tend to think in multi-year (even multi-decade) increments. The emphasis on preserving capital, akin to endowment models used by large universities, resonates with families who do not want to liquidate precious farmland.
• Addressing Emotional Stakes: The emotional dimension of possibly selling a farm that has been in the family for five generations cannot be overstated. Terra Bella acknowledges this reality, provides support, and ensures decisions are not merely about short-term gains but about peace of mind and a sense of honor toward family legacies.
• Emphasis on Ethics: Environmental stewardship, fair compensation of workers, and community welfare loom large for agricultural families. Angus therefore evaluates investments with a lens that considers broader ethical implications, from carbon footprints to labor policies.

6. Collaboration within the Financial Services Community

A critical—and sometimes overlooked—element of Terra Bella’s methodology is collaborating not just with accountants and solicitors, but also with fellow financial planners. Rather than guarding knowledge or viewing other advisors as competitors, Angus shares best practices, refers clients outside his niche, and invites reciprocal referrals when city firms encounter agriculture-specific succession cases they are ill-equipped to handle.

For Angus, this is more than good business—it is a moral stance. By expanding the network of competency and trust, the profession itself is elevated. He cites the influence of events hosted by philanthropic or service-oriented financial networks, and how they encourage advisors to “run through brick walls” for their clients, not for self-aggrandizement but in service of a bigger mission: lifting professional standards, building robust communities, and ensuring that farmland—and the families that operate it—continue to thrive.

7. A Culture of Humanity, Humor, and Team Spirit

Professionalism and ethics can sometimes be misunderstood as purely serious, rigid concepts. Angus demonstrates that a high standard of integrity can—and should—coexist with levity. One memorable anecdote from his corporate days was facilitating “Murder Week,” a game where each colleague was assigned a wooden knife with someone else’s name on it. To “stay alive,” you had to avoid the colleague who held your wooden knife. Once “killed,” you handed over your knife, and so on.

This playful activity, ironically named yet harmless in practice, achieved its true objective: it broke down silos. People who rarely spoke at the office had a reason to seek out one another, forging camaraderie in an environment that can often be tense and focused on deadlines. Underneath the silliness lay a serious principle: forging authentic human connections within a work setting fosters collaboration and lowers stress, ultimately benefiting the client.

Angus similarly organizes gestures like “random acts of kindness,” encouraging employees to show appreciation for one another. These small but meaningful gestures demonstrate that ethics is not just about disclaimers and codes of conduct. It is about daily interactions that nurture honesty, compassion, and empathy.

8. Looking Ahead: The Future of Rural Wealth Advice

Although Terra Bella has fewer than fifty clients today, the average scale of each engagement is significant. Families in prime agricultural regions often control millions of dollars in assets, and the conversation around farmland values continues to intensify as demand for food security remains high globally.

With this demand comes a need for sophisticated, well-rounded advice that weaves together tax strategy, environmental considerations, succession planning, philanthropic interests, and consistent performance measurement. Angus sees the future not in building a sprawling practice, but in staying deliberately “small enough to care” and “big enough to deliver.” He aims to:

1. Maintain Authentic Engagement – Resist the notion that growth must come at the cost of genuine, deeply personalized relationships. Angus wishes to preserve the ability to spend extended, face-to-face time with families and facilitate multi-generational conversations.
2. Leverage Technology Wisely – Terra Bella is open to software and platforms that simplify data handling and compliance, but only insofar as they free up more time for meaningful human interaction.
3. Influence the Next Generation of Advisers – Angus’s approach to mentoring underscores how crucial it is to foster new talent in financial services. By showing younger professionals the rewards of building relationships based on trust, empathy, and thorough due diligence, Terra Bella hopes to replicate its model well beyond a single practice.

9. Professionalism and Ethics as Cornerstones

At its core, Terra Bella exemplifies the confluence of professional standards and ethical imperatives. Angus’s journey—beginning as a farm kid who understood the rigors of rural life, morphing into a wealth manager who trains his lens on the broader well-being of families—demonstrates an alternative to the transactional approach sometimes associated with financial advice.

• Professionalism is evident in the firm’s methodical investment governance: extensive research, diversification across private and listed assets, and consistent monitoring of how each allocation impacts the overall family balance sheet. Meeting after meeting, Angus ensures decisions are accompanied by the proper due diligence and regulated best practices.
• Ethics shows up in how Angus handles the “silent conversations” within families, giving each person a voice and a respectful place to express concerns. It shows in his dedication to transparent fees—inviting the client’s perspective on what is fair, rather than imposing a take-it-or-leave-it price. And it shows in the emphasis on community, from ensuring older generations get the care they need, to systematically including the spouses and children in these long-term visions.

Ultimately, the success of Terra Bella is not measured solely by portfolio performance. Angus’s proudest moments are when families say, “We feel heard,” or when a matriarch beams because her grown children are reconciling old disputes, forging new agreements to keep the family legacy intact. That is the essence of a holistic approach—one that merges rigorous strategy and an abiding respect for human stories.

10. Conclusion: A Template for Servant-Leadership in Financial Advice

In recounting his story, Angus Stevenson offers an inspiring reminder that “professionalism” and “ethics” are not sterile checklists. Rather, they are daily decisions to remain transparent, to treat clients as partners, to innovate for the sake of their best interests, and to stand by them when the big transitions come—whether it is selling a legacy property or passing down the farm to the next generation.

The Terra Bella narrative holds lessons for advisors everywhere:

• Know Your “Why.” Angus’s love for rural life and respect for clients’ families drives every aspect of his practice. Authenticity sets the tone for trustworthy engagements.
• Embrace Collaboration. Partnerships with accountants, lawyers, referral networks, even fellow advisors with complementary niches, enrich the client experience.
• Be Willing to Go Deep. Expertise in taxes and portfolio construction is necessary but not sufficient. Address the emotional undercurrents. Bring in spouses, siblings, and even “in-laws” to ensure alignment.
• Apply Institutional-Caliber Thinking. Agriculture can benefit from advanced investment models—like endowment-style planning that emphasizes capital preservation—so long as they are adapted with an ethical lens and made understandable to farming families.
• Stay Human. Professionalism does not negate warmth, humor, or genuine compassion. A sense of community is as vital as any compliance document.

As Terra Bella Wealth continues its mission, Angus’s story underscores how the financial planning industry can modernize without losing sight of its higher calling: guiding individuals and families to stable, prosperous futures. Professionalism and ethics are not merely compliance obligations—they are the dual pillars that uphold an advisor’s reputation, client relationships, and broader social impact. By cultivating those pillars with sincerity and diligence, Angus and his team have turned Terra Bella into more than a firm; they have created a lasting beacon for the future of ethical, rural-focused financial advice.

Accreditation Points Allocation:

0.10 Technical Competence

0.10 Client Care and Practice

0.10 Regulatory Compliance and Consumer Protection

0.10 Professionalism and Ethics

0.40 Total CPD Points