Tara Shanahan

Some people have a gift for seeing what already exists beneath the surface. They notice the patterns, the possibilities, and the story waiting to be told before anyone else can quite put it into words. Tara Shanahan is one of those people.

Through her business, Intuitive Space, Tara helps artists, entrepreneurs, and creative businesses build digital spaces that feel deeply aligned with who they are—not just what they do. Her work blends thoughtful strategy with intuition, creating websites, systems, and marketing that feel less like a performance and more like a true reflection of the people behind the business.

As we've worked together on bringing the next chapter of Heart Be Your Guide to life, I've had the opportunity to experience Tara's work firsthand. She has a remarkable ability to listen beyond the brief, ask the right questions, and gently uncover what was there all along. She doesn't simply help businesses show up online—she helps them feel more like themselves.

I couldn't think of a more fitting person to feature in the Journal, and I'm so excited to introduce you to Tara. If you are interested in learning more about her or working with her check out her profile here.

1. Let's start with you.

Before we talk about your work, I'd love to know a little about you. Who is Tara outside of Intuitive Space?

I’m endlessly curious. I love art, music, astrology, fashion, traveling, good food, weird little stores, beautiful spaces, and people who are really obsessed with whatever they’re obsessed with. I’m happiest when I’m making something, seeing something I’ve never seen before, or sitting at a bar with someone I love talking about our lives for four hours.

I think the line between who I am and what I do is pretty blurry, in a good way. I’m always collecting ideas, noticing things, making connections. My camera roll is basically screenshots of outfits, interiors, astrology transits, business ideas, and things I want to make.

2. The Beginning

What inspired you to create Intuitive Space? Was there a moment when you realized you wanted to help people build businesses differently?

I kind of accidentally created this business. I was living in New York when the pandemic happened. I’d worked in the music industry my entire life and then all of a sudden, poof. I moved back to Chicago to help my dad at Metro and ended up running the e-commerce, marketing, and social media while we were closed. It became this crash course in figuring out how to keep a small business alive when the thing it existed to do literally couldn’t happen. That work helped keep the lights on until we could reopen.

Then I went to get my first haircut since the pandemic and met Emily Katz. We basically became friends in 90 minutes after realizing all the cosmic overlaps in our life. I talked about what I’d done at Metro and she needed an assistant and within a couple of months she started referring me to other business owners who needed the same kind of support.

It was never really a moment where I decided, I’m going to start a business. There were just constellations of people I connected into.

3. The Leap

Building a business rooted in intuition and creativity isn't always the conventional path. Was there ever a moment you questioned it, and what kept you moving forward?

Honestly, no. I grew up around artists and people who carved their own paths, so the unconventional path was paradoxically the conventional one in my household.

I was always surrounded by people making things, starting things, touring, creating businesses, and figuring it out as they went. I think that gave me a very different relationship to risk. There was never really an assumption that there was one prescribed path your life was supposed to follow.

4. The Heart

You describe your work as helping people create businesses that feel like a true reflection of who they are. Why is that so important to you?

Running a business, to me, means you’re self-actualizing your spiritual gifts, which also means you’re inevitably going to come up against your edges. Your relationship with money, worth, creativity, leadership, boundaries, visibility, all of it gets reflected back at you through the business.

I think when we build businesses in that context, we have an opportunity to build them in ways that are really human. The pandemic really crystallized that for me. So many small businesses were under existential threat, and while major corporations were being bailed out, who kept small businesses alive? Their communities and friends. Someone bought a T-shirt. Someone donated to a GoFundMe. Someone bought a gift card for a restaurant they couldn’t even eat at yet.

Small businesses are the heart of a place. Whenever things get a little doomsday, we remember pretty quickly that ultimately we will rely on each other. I think the way we build our businesses should reflect that.

5. The Craft

You work at the intersection of intuition and strategy. How do you balance listening to your instincts while also building practical systems that help businesses grow?

They’re not separate for me!

The best system is the one you will actually use, so in that sense, systems have to be intuitive. Someone can build you the most sophisticated workflow in the world, but if you don’t understand it, don’t enjoy using it, or it doesn’t make sense to your brain, then it isn’t actually a good system for you.

A lot of my work is figuring out how someone naturally operates and building around that instead of forcing them into a predetermined structure. If I have a client who is a visual learner, for example, I might build something in Notion rather than a traditional spreadsheet because it lends itself to a more visual context. The strategy still needs to be sound, but it also needs to feel natural enough that you’ll actually use it.

6. Seeing Potential

You spend your days helping people bring their ideas into the world. What's something you often see in your clients before they see it in themselves?

Whenever someone hires me, they usually come in saying, “I need help with this one thing,” and very often it turns out the thing we actually need to work on is completely different.

I think about businesses holistically. A lot of the problems we experience day to day are really symptoms of a larger systemic issue. Maybe you think you have a social media problem, but really you don’t know what you’re selling. Maybe you think you need a new booking system, but the actual issue is the way your services are structured.

Until we figure out the larger flow and build something that actually works, those little symptoms are just going to keep popping up in different places. I think one of my strengths is being able to zoom out and see the connection between all of them.

7. Behind the Scenes

What's one small detail in your process that most people would never notice, but you believe makes all the difference?

I think a lot about friction. Tiny moments where something is harder than it needs to be.

It can be as small as the wording on a booking page, how many clicks it takes a customer to find something, or a task someone keeps avoiding every week. Those details seem insignificant on their own, but they compound.

I’m always looking for those little points of resistance because usually there’s a way to make them easier, and making ten tiny things easier can completely change the experience of running a business.

8. Protecting the Magic

As your business continues to evolve, what's one thing you're committed to never losing?

Freedom. I love that my work lets me do a lot of different things.

I can spend one day working on the backend of a business, the next writing copy, the next looking at someone’s business birth chart, and then end up helping conceptualize an entirely new project. I’m interested in too many things to do one thing forever, and I’ve realized that’s not something I need to fix.

I want Intuitive Space to keep giving me the freedom to follow my curiosity and work on as many different things as I can.

9. Redefining Success

How has your definition of success changed since you first started your business?

There’s so much messaging around scaling, growing, hiring, making more, doing more. And those things can absolutely be part of success, but only if they’re actually what you want. A business can be incredibly successful because it gives someone flexibility. Or because it supports ten employees really well. Or because it becomes an institution in its community. Or because it lets someone make their art for a living.

I’m much more interested now in defining success first and building toward that, rather than inheriting someone else’s definition of it.

10. Joy

What's a moment in your work that reminds you, "This is exactly what I was meant to be doing"?

There’s a very specific feeling when you land on exactly the right words for something. Suddenly the whole idea clicks into place and you’re like, Oh, there it is. I love that moment. Especially when the client reads it and immediately says, “That’s exactly what I was trying to say.”

11. Looking Ahead

What are you most excited about right now? Whether it's a new idea, a new offering, or simply the direction your business is heading.

I’m probably most excited about working on some new creative projects for myself.

So much of my work is helping other people bring their ideas into the world, and I’m feeling really inspired to turn some of that creative energy toward my own ideas right now. I’m also spending more time developing my readings and thinking about how I want that side of Intuitive Space to evolve.

It feels like a season of making things and seeing where they lead, which is my favorite place to be.

12. An Invitation

If someone is feeling overwhelmed or disconnected from their business, what would you want them to know before they ever worked with you?

The biggest thing is remembering that you have autonomy.

I’m never going to tell you there’s one way you have to do something. There may be a way that functionally works better, and I’ll absolutely tell you that, but the point is to find the version that works for you.

If the business you created is making you sick, miserable, or completely disconnected from yourself, something has to change. This was supposed to be fun! Go back to your why. What made you want to do this in the first place? What are the parts that still inspire you? What would you do differently if you remembered that you’re actually allowed to?

Sometimes we get so deep into running the business that we forget we created that universe for ourselves.

13. Heart Be Your Guide

Heart Be Your Guide is built on the belief that small businesses can change the way we experience our communities and our lives. What does "following your heart" mean to you today?

Following your heart, to me, is being willing to take those little nudges seriously. You don’t need the whole map. You just need enough courage to take the next interesting turn.

14. Small Business Love

Is there a small business, maker, or creative whose work has inspired you recently and deserves a little extra love?

There are so many, but lately I’ve been really excited about Txa Txa Club. There’s something about what they’re doing that feels incredibly special. The food is amazing, obviously, but I also love businesses that create an entire little universe around themselves.

I made the playlist for a dinner they did at Goldust Studios, which was such a treat. Those are the kinds of small-business moments I love most: food, music, beauty, art, and people all colliding in the same room.

15. One Last Thought

If you could leave readers with one piece of encouragement for someone who's building something meaningful but moving through uncertainty, what would you tell them?

The best is yet to come.

You don’t have to know exactly what it becomes yet. You’re allowed to change your mind, follow the thing that’s interesting to you now, and let what you’re building evolve alongside you.

You’re allowed to build while you’re becoming.