He built a $12 million empire on slime — and retired at 25. Now he's learned his new freedom can also be 'destructive'

He funded the business himself but later closed it once it started making him enough income to live on. Since then, he has found the lack of structure in his days harder to handle than he anticipated — and this is something anyone counting down to an early retirement date could run into.

“If I’m not mindful, it can actually be something that’s destructive in my life,” he said of the freedom.

How a teenager’s slime hobby became a $12 million business

Karram is the second-youngest of five children and grew up in South Florida. His parents emigrated from Jamaica, his father invested in real estate and his mother handled the children’s schooling at home.

Because he was taught at home, his school day was usually done by around midday. He spent the spare time on small money-making projects, including brewing kombucha as a young teenager and selling it by the jar to people he knew.

He came across slime videos on Instagram when he was 16 and began making his own out of glue, activator and dye, posting the process online. After about a year he had roughly 70,000 followers, according to his Times profile.

The supplies weren’t cheap, so at 17 he tried selling some of what he made. He produced 50 slimes and sold two of them, one to his brother-in-law. The next month he tried again, this time telling the story behind each one, and sold 30.

On Black Friday in 2018 he put 1,000 jars on sale, a batch that had taken him weeks to make and that he worried was far more than anyone would buy. The whole stock sold in three minutes while his family watched alongside him.

Some customers who missed out complained that he hadn’t made enough and accused him of spoiling their holiday shopping. He scheduled a restock for Cyber Monday and worked until 4 a.m. for three nights to produce another 1,000 jars.

A message from Kim Kardashian and $4 million a year

By early 2019, five pallets of containers and 40 boxes of glue were being dropped in his parents’ front yard. His mother, siblings and a cousin packed orders, his father managed the finances and, by that summer, the company had outgrown the garage and moved into a 1,500-square-foot space.

Karram’s parents wanted him to stay in college. After he failed his first class, he promised them he would go back if the business didn’t work out. He dropped out to run it full time.

The company got a boost when reality TV star and entrepreneur Kim Kardashian messaged him directly. He made her a custom set based on her children’s favorite colors, scents and themes, and after she shared it with her followers, traffic to his website spiked. By 2023 the company was doing more than $4 million a year in sales.

Karram told the Times that his goal from the beginning was to build enough investment income that he wouldn’t need the business to pay his bills. The schedule that got him there wore on him, though. He spent years working until 1 or 2 a.m., and even after bringing on staff, he continued to film and edit every video himself. By his own account he had been burned out for a couple of years and had lost interest in the work.