He looks into the mirror as an inexperienced young teen and wonders how he is going to progress with cutting his hair for the first time.

He eventually begins the cut that will change his passion forever.

Senior Marc Jaramillo started cutting hair when he was in middle school. He used to get his hair cut by a barber or his mother, but things changed. Forced to cut his hair himself due to inconvenient circumstances, he began to think of other possibilities.

“I was going to go get my uncle’s clippers and cut my hair myself, but my mom didn’t believe me so she said to go for it,” Jaramillo said. “I got the clippers and went to a mirror and I went at it for three hours, and at first I had no idea what to do. Eventually, I took the clippers and just started cutting.”

After he started cutting his own hair frequently, he wanted to cut someone else’s. Of course, like a normal older brother, he wanted to try it on his younger brother. After multiple tries, he seemed to have cutting hair down.

“At first I was just cutting my hair and my brother’s, but eventually I started on my uncle’s too,” Jaramillo said. “Freshman year is when I started cutting a few friends’ hair but I didn’t think much of it because I still had my mind stuck on a career in architecture.”

Eventually Jaramillo started gaining more customers when people started talking to their friends.

“Sophomore year is when a few more guys starting hitting me up for haircuts,”  Jaramillo said. “Junior year is really when I started getting more customers, and it has just grown from there.”

Cutting hair in a small building in his yard, Jaramillo gets to work from home.

“My dad, my uncle and I started building it in the summer after sophomore year in June and then finished about in August,” Jaramillo said. “It wasn’t really a project. We were in a hurry to finish and we usually worked on it Saturdays and Sundays.”

Jaramillo relies on his haircuts to get the word out about his business. 

“My haircuts are really like walking advertisements,” Jaramillo said. “If [the haircut] is nice then one guy would ask another guy where they got their hair cut and they would say ‘Marc’ and then they would hit me up on Instagram, Snapchat or just text me.”

Jaramillo is busy with many different soccer leagues he’s involved in, so he definitely has good and bad weeks. However, even with a busy schedule, Jaramillo manages to maintain a successful schedule.

“On a bad week I usually have around 35 to 40 clients,” Jaramillo said. “On a good week I usually have around 50 to 60.”

Even though Marc still goes to Texas High, he has customers all around the area that come to him. Some drive from almost an hour away.

“I have a lot of haircuts from Texas High, some from Arkansas [High] and Pleasant Grove,” Jaramillo said. “I cut some people’s hair from Bradley, Arkansas, A&M Texarkana, some family members and also from my soccer leagues I am in.”

Social media is a good way for people to get popular, and Marc has experienced some of this with famous barbers across the U.S.

“If you comment or like a barber’s post, then other ones may go through the likes and comments and might click on your name and they may follow you,” said Jaramillo. “My picture has gotten reposted twice and this has really helped me because other barbers started contacting me. The first barber that messaged me in Instagram was really surprised at how old I was for my skill because I was only a freshman.”

Some of the barbers that have contacted Jaramillo have tried to get him in contact with local barbers so he can have a job here at a barbershop.

“A barber that contacted me was trying to help me get a job, but he was all the way in New York so he didn’t really know anyone in Texarkana because it is pretty small,” Jaramillo said. “This has really helped me get more followers on Instagram that are barbers and a few have talked to me about jobs but no that many because I am still in highschool.”

After Marc’s haircutting business really blew up he has now decided to pursue a career in it instead of his previous choice which was architecture.

“After high school I will be here for about a month or two and then I am going to leave for Austin,” Jaramillo said. “I am going to attend a barber college in Austin, and after I am done with that I am going to go to the Paul Mitchell cosmetology school that they have there so that I will be able to do both men and women’s hair. After my three years of schooling, I am going to be grinding a lot to be able to open my first barbershop. I want to open up a barbershop in four different places. I want one in Texarkana, Austin, and California, and then the last one to be somewhere in New York.”