By Andrew Fielden
A student’s side hustle became a full-time business.
Jack TerHaar, a fourth-year student at the University of Georgia, began detailing cars in and around the Athens area in September 2022. Most of his early customers were close friends, but he soon realized the price of car detailing was too steep for a student’s budget.
That’s when TerHaar said Detail Dawgs expanded its clientele to businesses and broader members of the Athens community.
Detail Dawgs aims to “provide a brand-new car” appearance, according to TerHaar. But the approach is time-consuming with some jobs taking around three to four hours to complete, he said. According to the company’s website, exterior services start at $100 while a three-hour full interior and exterior detail is listed for $180.
TerHaar said the beginning stages were difficult. He said he struggled to find a permanent home for Detail Dawgs until deciding the best plan was to not have one. He made Detail Dawgs into a fully mobile business that meets clients at a place most convenient to them.
“I think it’s great for customers because you don’t have to go drive to a carwash,” said TerHaar. “You can be at your office. You can be at your home. You can be working. You can be spending time with family. We’re just going to be out there doing that work and you don’t even realize that we’re there.”
But running his own business is a full-time job, which TerHaar said requires balancing with both school and personal life. At UGA, TerHaar is studying finance and real estate in the Terry College of Business and is involved in multiple extracurriculars, he said.
“When you start a business, there’s constant problems, constant communication that you have to have,” said TerHaar. “I chose to make the decision in April of last year that I was going to take this thing and really see what I could do with it.”
TerHaar said his involvement in the Terry College’s Idea Accelerator program contributed to his success with Detail Dawgs. This program is part of the entrepreneurship certificate offered by the Terry College.
Cassidy Dye, who has worked with the certificate program for the past six years as its administrative associate, described the Idea Accelerator as a “business boot camp.”
She said it works with multiple cohorts of student entrepreneurs to refine and pitch their businesses and to compete for investment funding. TerHaar compared the program and its pitch structure to the popular reality television series “Shark Tank.”
The Terry College houses its entrepreneurial programs in Studio 225, a repurposed warehouse that provides students with space, materials and opportunities to cultivate their ideas, said Dye, who said she works with students behind-the-scenes of the pitch competitions.
According to Dye, UGA’s entrepreneurship certificate program is popular with students interested in running their own businesses. She said it is the largest certificate program at UGA and attracts over 150 applications from students across multiple majors each enrollment cycle.
Dye said the program attracts students with the business background needed to get a business started, but also attracts students with the creative and technical background to create a product.
“Art students don’t realize they are entrepreneurs until they get out of college, and they realize they want to sell their painting and art in general,” Dye said.
TerHaar graduates in May and plans to continue his entrepreneurial journey. He said the biggest lesson he has learned over the last 18 months: “You just have to take action.”
Andrew Fielden is a journalism student at the University of Georgia
