IN CONVERSATION WITH ISOBEL LORNA

interview by JANA LETONJA

With an audience of more than two million, Isobel Lorna has built her platform around ambition, luxury and the pursuit of a life you genuinely want. Known for everything from Hermès and Porsche to goal-setting and her viral mantra, “save the pennies and the Porsche will buy itself,” she is now turning that philosophy into a business of her own. Her new venture, Agende, is a luxury organiser that brings together financial planning, productivity and manifestation, designed to make being organised with your money and ambitions feel every bit as aspirational as the luxury purchases themselves. What makes Agende distinctive is its considered design, including a leather pouch, whiteboard, and mirror; it’s a tool for an ambitious woman always on-the-go. 

photography by LUCERO

For anyone discovering Agende for the first time, what is it, and what made you decide this was the product you wanted to create?
For years I've built a community around two things: ambition, and a love of the finer things in life. Handbags, shopping vlogs, goal-setting, and manifesting. We wanted the same thing: more from life, the willingness to work for it, and beautiful things along the way.

I carried a planner everywhere and kept wishing it felt as considered as the rest of my life. Nothing out there did both, practical or beautiful, never the two together. Then it clicked. What do you get when you combine a luxury handbag with a planner? An agenda.

So I made it. A four-ring A5 agenda in calfskin leather and suede, in a range of considered colours, with paper inserts you can swap in and out as your life changes. A day view, a week at a glance, space to manifest, a system for your finances. I've also designed leather inserts, because the details are the point. A pouch for your daily essentials. A mirror, for the obvious reason. And a whiteboard for when you're feeling creative and want to brainstorm.

You describe Agende as reimagining ambition as a form of luxury. What does luxury mean to you today?
Luxury, to me, is freedom. The freedom to pursue my goals and manifestations with confidence, without inhibition, and with the tools and support to make them possible. An entrepreneurial mindset, the confidence to take risks, and a community of friends and family who champion your wins as if they were their own, those are luxuries I’ve come to value more deeply. And I still absolutely believe in the luxury of beautiful things too.

With Agende, I want to reframe ambition as something that can feel aspirational and sexy again, regardless of how we choose to show up. We’re moving beyond the “girl grip era”, that feeling of having to carry everything in your hands, from your notebook and lip gloss to your keys, wallet, compact mirror and everything in between. I’m a mix of Type A, Type B, and probably a few letters that haven’t been invented yet, so I know that instinct all too well.

I wanted Agende to offer a more considered way of navigating the everyday tasks that accompany an ambitious life. The design needed to feel as elevated and intentional as a luxury handbag, because why shouldn’t your agenda be just as chic as the handbag you carry it alongside?

So much of what I’ve built has come from simply having the confidence to show up before I had all the answers. My influence today is a result of that ambition, and of being willing to be visible and take risks. If I could tell my younger self one thing, it would be that the object itself is rarely the most interesting part. Whether it’s a handbag in one hand, an agenda in the other, or anything else that represents an achievement, what matters most is the ambition and determination behind it.

That, to me, is the new definition of luxury: not choosing between beautiful things and ambition, but having both. It’s having the freedom and confidence to become the person capable of creating the life you want, and enjoying the beautiful things you choose to bring along for the journey.

Your mantra, “save the pennies and the Porsche will buy itself,” has gone viral. Where did that philosophy originally come from?
The mantra came from something I kept seeing on social media, young women talking about becoming a “Porsche mum,” often imagining the car as something that represented a certain lifestyle or would ultimately be bought for them. I wanted to turn that idea on its head. Why wait for someone else to give you the life you want when you can set the goal for yourself and work towards it?

“Save the pennies and the Porsche will buy itself” is really about intention. It’s about deciding what you want, being disciplined enough to work towards it, and not allowing the pressure to constantly upgrade or keep up with everyone else to distract you from the bigger picture. I drove a Ford KA until I could afford to buy and customise my own Porsche. People would ask why I didn’t get an Audi in between. For me, there was no need. I knew what I was working towards, and I was happy to stay focused on the goal rather than spending along the way simply for the sake of having something newer.

That mindset is actually at the heart of Agende. I’ve been so humbled by the response to the launch. We generated over £100.000 in the first 10 minutes, reached £250.000 in the first hour and surpassed £400.000 within six hours. More than 100.000 people joined the waitlist, which continues to grow even after we sold out. To me, that response says something bigger than the product itself. People are connecting with the idea of having a tool that helps them organise, stay accountable, and act on what they want for themselves.

So, if there’s one thing I’d like to make clear, it’s that Agende isn’t the antithesis of the Porsche philosophy, it’s an extension of it. The point isn’t to tell people what they should want or what success should look like. It’s to encourage intention around whatever that goal is. For me, it was the Porsche and, yes, the handbag too. For someone else, it might be getting through medical school, planning the wedding they’ve imagined since they were six, building a business, managing a career, or simply keeping a busy family life running smoothly.

The luxury isn’t in telling you what the end goal should be. It’s in giving yourself the permission, structure and ambition to go after it.

You’re known for loving luxury brands, but Agende is partly about shifting attention away from simply buying the next luxury item. Has your own relationship with consumption changed?
I’ve always loved luxury, so I don’t think my relationship with consumption has changed so much as my understanding of what makes something truly valuable has evolved. Through watching consumer behaviour and the way culture is shifting online, I’ve noticed a renewed interest in intellectualism and, with it, the rise of the “intellectual influencer.” The aspiration today feels broader than simply owning the right handbag. I see women wanting the handbag collection, but also the investment portfolio, the financial literacy, the career, the business, and the confidence to be the most knowledgeable person in the room.

I think women are increasingly recognising that they don’t have to choose between being smart, sexy, ambitious or wealthy. And wealth itself can mean different things to different people, financial wealth, intellectual wealth, creative freedom, time, influence, or the ability to make your own choices. Agende is really a physical manifestation of that shift. It’s a product born from the belief that our ambition is one of our greatest assets, yet often the one we talk about the least.

I’m incredibly grateful that my ambition and career have allowed me to experience and buy traditional luxury items, and I still appreciate them for what they are, beautifully designed objects, craftsmanship and, in many cases, markers of personal achievement. But when I think about the greatest luxury, I always come back to freedom, having the confidence and resources to pursue whatever it is I dream about.

A luxury item can be a symbol of what you’ve achieved, but it doesn’t achieve the goal for you. The most compelling version of success, to me, is the combination of the two. The ambition and intelligence behind the achievement, alongside the physical things that might represent it. I don’t want to move away from luxury, I want to broaden the conversation around what we consider luxurious.

Was there a particular problem in your own life that made you realise you wanted an organiser combining money, goals and your everyday schedule?
The original problem was actually very simple. Why shouldn’t the thing that helps hold your life together also be beautiful? I carried a planner everywhere, and I kept wishing it felt as considered as the rest of the things I chose to surround myself with. Everything I found seemed to sit at one extreme or the other, incredibly practical but uninspiring, or beautiful but not designed for the realities of a busy, ambitious life. I couldn’t find something that genuinely brought the two together.

That became a much bigger idea for me. Women are being encouraged to build increasingly multifaceted lives. Careers, businesses, financial independence, families, friendships, creativity and everything in between, yet the tools supporting that ambition are often treated as purely functional. Why shouldn’t the things that help us build those lives be as considered as the lives themselves?

I don’t believe women should have to choose between aesthetics and practicality, ambition and enjoyment, or intellect and femininity. We can take our goals seriously and still want the process of achieving them to feel beautiful. There’s something empowering about making space for every part of your life without feeling that one has to come at the expense of another.

That thinking is really what led me to Agende. I wanted to create something that recognised the woman using it as a whole person, not simply as someone trying to be more organised. It’s a tool for planning, but it’s also a place to give your goals, finances, ideas and ambitions a physical presence in your everyday life.

I’m also a mix of Type A and Type B, depending on the day, so I wanted Agende to accommodate the fact that there isn’t one correct way to be a go-getter or productive. Some people need structure down to the minute, others need somewhere to capture an idea and let it evolve. The point is to make the way you already work feel more considered, enjoyable and, yes, luxurious.

And perhaps that’s the wider conversation I’m most interested in. We’re seeing more women build companies, lead teams, manage their own finances, create careers on their own terms and define success for themselves. I wanted Agende to be part of that conversation, not by telling women what they should aspire to, but by creating a beautiful, intentional tool for whatever they decide that aspiration looks like.

Why was it important for something centred on financial discipline and productivity to look and feel luxurious?
Why not? Why shouldn’t the things that support our everyday lives be allowed to feel luxurious?

We photograph beautiful cars, design homes that make people ask for the interior designer’s number, and buy handbags that can represent a moment of achievement, a tangible “I made it.” But so much of what actually gets us there happens privately. The sacrifices, early mornings, the financial planning, the ideas written down at midnight, the goals we keep returning to, the decisions no one else sees. Those are the things that ultimately build the life we’re celebrating.

I wanted to turn that idea on its head. Why shouldn’t the tools that support our ambition be as beautiful and considered as the things that represent the result? If we’re going to spend so much of our lives planning, working, building and dreaming, I don’t see why those everyday rituals should feel purely functional.

For me, luxury isn’t just about making something look expensive. It’s about intention, taking something that is part of your everyday life and giving it the thought, design and attention it deserves. Agende is designed around that philosophy, to make the process of pursuing your ambitions feel just as considered as the achievements themselves.

And I think there’s something particularly powerful about that for women. So many of our achievements are deeply personal, and not all of them come with an obvious external marker. Sometimes the biggest luxury is being able to look at your own life and know how much thought, discipline and ambition went into creating it.

There are countless productivity apps and budgeting tools available. Why did you want Agende to be a physical, analogue product?
Because in a world increasingly dominated by screens, AI and constant digital input, sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is put a pen to paper and clear our minds.

There’s something fundamentally different about writing something down by hand. It forces you to slow down, process what you’re thinking and make a deliberate decision about what deserves your attention. There’s also a real satisfaction in physically crossing something off a list, you can see the progress you’re making rather than watching it disappear into another app notification.

I was recently a guest on ITVX’s The Rundown, where I was asked to sell the host a pen in a moment inspired by The Wolf of Wall Street. My argument was simple. When we reach for our phones to organise our lives, we’re also opening the door to everything else competing for our attention: Instagram notifications, TikTok, WhatsApp, emails, the news. The very device we’re using to become more productive can instantly become a source of distraction.

Paper doesn’t ask you to check anything else. There’s no notification waiting for you, no algorithm trying to capture your attention. It gives you a moment to focus on what’s in front of you.

That’s why I wanted Agende to be analogue. It’s not about rejecting technology, I use it constantly and I love it. It’s about recognising that sometimes we need to step away from the noise and physically engage with our thoughts, our plans and our intentions. Agende is designed to make that ritual feel intentional, beautiful and enjoyable, because the process of working towards something deserves our adoration too.

You’ve said your audience wants more from life while also loving the finer things. What have you learned about ambition from speaking to that audience every day?
That our shared ambition may look completely different from person to person, but the desire underneath it is often the same,to have the freedom and agency to build a life that feels like your own.

My community has taught me that there isn’t one definition of success for women anymore. For one person, ambition might mean building a multimillion-pound business, for another it might mean buying her first home, becoming financially independent, finishing her degree, changing careers, travelling the world, raising a family, or simply creating more time for the things she loves. And I think that’s incredibly exciting.

What I’ve learned from speaking to my audience every day is that women don’t necessarily want to be told what their version of success should look like. They want the confidence and the tools to define it for themselves. They can love beautiful things and still be incredibly ambitious. They can want financial freedom and a handbag. They can care about their career and their family and their friendships and their appearance. None of those things have to cancel each other out.

That’s probably the biggest lesson I’ve taken from my community. Ambition isn’t a particular aesthetic or a particular income level, it’s the decision to take your own goals seriously. Agende comes from that belief,  that whatever you’re working towards, your ambition deserves to be given intention, structure and considered space.

And ultimately, I think the most empowering thing is not telling women what to want. It’s reminding them that they’re allowed to want more, whatever “more” means to them.

Manifestation is part of the Agende concept. How do you personally balance manifestation with the less glamorous side of achieving a goal, budgeting, planning and discipline?
I think manifestation gets misunderstood as simply wishing for something and waiting for it to happen. For me, it’s the opposite. The dream is the starting point, but the manifestation only becomes meaningful when you turn it into something you can actually work towards.

That’s the thinking behind one of the workbooks I’ve designed for Agende, a practical manifestation guide available as a paper refill. It takes something that can feel quite abstract and turns it into a process. You identify what you want, break it down into achievable steps, establish the non-negotiables you need to commit to every day, and then confront the sacrifices or compromises that might be required along the way.

I love social media because it’s an incredible creative engine. It can expose us to new ideas, lifestyles and possibilities and make us think, “I want that.” But there’s a difference between being inspired by a goal and having a plan to achieve it. I wanted the Agende manifestation refill to help bridge that gap, to take the feeling of I want this and turn it into here’s what I’m going to do about it.

For me, manifestation has never been about sitting back and expecting something to arrive. It’s about clarity, intention and, ultimately, discipline. You have to be willing to put the work behind the vision. That’s really what Agende is designed to support, not just dreaming about the life you want, but creating the structure and accountability to actively build it.

What has surprised you most about creating a physical product compared with building a personal brand online?
What surprised me most was how personal it felt. I’ve spent years building my community online, so I already had an incredibly strong relationship with the people I was creating for. But creating something physical for them felt completely different. I wasn’t just asking them to watch or engage, I was asking them to bring something I had created into their everyday lives. I felt a huge responsibility to get it right.

I became completely invested in every detail. There were so many iterations of the first Agende because I wanted it to feel as close to perfect as I could make it. I wasn’t interested in putting something out simply because it was ready, I wanted to know that if someone in my community had been following my journey for years, they would understand why I had made every decision I had made.

That relationship with my community has evolved alongside me. They’ve seen me go from being a young intern at a firm, to building a career online, to now becoming a founder. They’ve seen different versions of me, and I think that creates a level of trust that you can’t manufacture when you’re launching a new product.

That’s what made launching Agende feel surprisingly vulnerable. On social media, I control what I share. A product is different, it’s tangible, it exists outside of me, and it has to communicate something about who I am without me standing there to explain it. I wanted Agende to feel like an extension of me, but also like a version of me that my audience hadn’t seen before.

So perhaps the biggest surprise has been realising that building a physical brand isn’t a departure from the relationship I’ve built online; it’s an evolution of it. Agende is my way of taking the mantras, ideas and principles I’ve shared with my community for years and turning them into something they can actually use in their own lives.

What does your own Agende look like? What pages, goals or organisational rituals do you actually use most?
My Agende is actually a pretty good reflection of how my brain works because I use a combination of structure, financial planning and complete brain dumps.

The “Save the Pennies” pack is probably the most important one for me. It’s a saving method I developed and built into Agende, and the pack contains three workbooks so you can work towards three different financial goals at once. It’s really about doing the maths, but not the kind of maths we used to do with our parents around the dining table that ended with everyone in tears. It’s about looking honestly at what you’re spending, deciding what you’re willing to say no to, understanding where you can reallocate that money, and then giving yourself something specific to save towards. I like having the goal in front of me rather than just vaguely thinking, “I should probably save more.”

I also use the “Weekly Planner” constantly. I like having the entire week in front of me so I can see my priorities, meetings and events in one place. I’ve also added motivational quotes, which might sound slightly cheesy, but when you’re having one of those weeks, a reminder of what you’re working towards can genuinely make a difference.

Then there are the less glamorous things that make the system work for me. I use the leather pouch to keep the things I’m constantly reaching for: my comb, charging cable, paracetamol, lip liner, lip gloss and earphones, particularly for those last-minute meetings when I’m moving between places. And I always have the whiteboard insert with me. That’s where I can be completely chaotic. I’ll use it for the sudden ideas, notes, brainstorms or anything I need to get out of my head quickly. Then I can erase it and start again.

I think that’s actually the beauty of Agende for me. It doesn’t require me to become a different kind of person to use it. It gives the different parts of how I already think and work a considered and stylish place to live.

And finally, what’s currently at the top of your own Agende, what are you manifesting or working towards next?
At the top of my Agende right now is building the brand into a genuinely self-sustaining business. The launch has given us an incredible foundation, and my priority now is to build the right team, invest back into the company and make sure we create something with longevity rather than simply chasing the next big moment.

I also want the success of Agende to create opportunities beyond the business itself. I want to use what we’ve built to support other female entrepreneurs, create meaningful opportunities for women within the company, and explore how we can give back to organisations supporting women who need it. I’ve always believed that ambition is more powerful when it creates space for other people to be ambitious too.

But, if I can be slightly less serious for a moment, I’ll tell you what was actually at the top of my Agende “Weekly Planner” on launch day, get a nice meal from McDonald’s. After everything, the planning, the stress, the waiting, the launch, that was genuinely the reward I had written down for myself. I always say, you can take the girl out of Bristol, but you can’t take Bristol out of the girl.

And I think that’s probably where I am right now. I still have huge ambitions for Agende, but I don’t want to lose sight of the person who had those ambitions in the first place. The goal was never simply to build a luxury brand. It was to build something from an idea, create a life on my own terms, and hopefully show other women that they can do the same. There will always be another goal at the top of the page but I think it’s just as important to remember to enjoy the McDonald’s along the way, even when eating a Big Mac in a Porsche.