Talk about an entrepreneur: Fourteen-year-old Tucker Findley earns six figures as an online seller, successfully manages more than 2,500 square feet of goods, and routinely sells more than $5,000 worth of merchandise per hour at his live-streamed auctions.
Not bad for a kid who left traditional school in the third grade and struggles with a host of learning challenges including dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, apraxia, and disruptive mood dysregulation disorder.
Five years ago, the Sterling 9-year-old couldn’t count to 10. He couldn’t recite the alphabet. “People would make fun of me — it’s still hard to talk about,” Findley says.
So his parents, Ryan and Rebecca, decided to withdraw their son from his local elementary school and to homeschool him instead. His life took another turn while he was out on a walk with friends. “I went to the river with my friends from the neighborhood,” Findley says. “There were golf balls everywhere.”
Findley’s family lives downriver from Lansdowne Resort and 1757 Golf Club, so the area is a natural repository for wayward golf balls. “We just grabbed all of them,” Findley says. “I thought, ‘There’s got to be some way we can sell these.’”
After cleaning up the golf balls, Findley eagerly listed them on Facebook Marketplace, where they sold immediately. He used the profits to pay friends 5 cents per ball to find and clean more golf balls. He also bought golf balls at yard sales. The balls sold — by the pound — and Findley began purchasing antique toys with the profits.
“He’s a savant with toys,” says his dad, Ryan. “He can tell you everything about them.”
And through it all, he was learning how to count, create spreadsheets, negotiate, speak, and more. His online school even developed a curriculum around his business dealings.
“He does all his own negotiating himself — we don’t do it,” says mom Rebecca, noting he sold a Barbie doll for $1,000 and the parts from a Barbie house for $12,000.
Today, Findley earns big bucks as an online seller, with merchandise on eBay and Whatnot, a live online reselling marketplace. His inventory includes thousands of vintage baseball cards, Star Wars toys, and antique Transformers. More than 6,000 followers typically view his auctions, where he sells around 200 items in an hour.
Findley acknowledges he has come a long way from the struggling little boy who couldn’t count to 10.
“I feel so much better,” he says. “Looking forward, I want to see how big I can get this business.”
Feature image by Amie Otto
This story originally ran in our January Issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to Northern Virginia Magazine.
