While she waited for the owner to come in, Johnson occupied herself by glancing at magazine articles about the company posted on the bulletin board. As soon as she noticed the owner's photograph, she did a double take. The caption described John Magennis as a 16-year-old.
"I had no idea he was 16," she said. "I just thought, `This is a joke.' I was going to leave before he got there."
The 33-year-old Johnson decided to stay, however, not wanting to offend the search firm that set up the meeting. After her interview, she gave the idea some thought and decided to accept Magennis' offer to work as a World Wide Web site designer.
"This job appealed to me," she said.
Johnson is not the only one who has been won over by the teen-age entrepreneur. Magennis' Norwood-based business, which develops promotional sites on the web for other companies, had revenue of $300,000 last year. This year, Magennis projects revenue could climb as high as $500,000. The company has five employees and more than 60 clients.
Magennis first logged on to the Internet four years ago, when he was 12. Since then, the pull of cyberspace has been tough to resist.
"From the time I got home, I would spend until 11 or 12 at night on the computer," said Magennis, a self-taught programmer. "After a while, I really knew the ins and outs."
When he was 14, Magennis posted an advertisement on the web, offering to design sites for businesses. His first customer was a florist in New York City. Magennis charged $15 to create a site for that company, Flower World Inc.
Internet Exposer customers now pay as much as $30,000 for the company's services.
Particularly in the beginning, Magennis tried to avoid face-to-face meetings with clients. He would communicate by e-mail or telephone. Until he moved into office space in Norwood, he ran the company from his bedroom in his family's home in Dedham.
"Now that the Internet is there, you can almost hide your identity," he said. "Age, race, sex, are things that become obsolete."
These days, Magennis feels more comfortable meeting with clients in person. He said he has learned over the past three years how to get people, including his employees, to take him seriously.
"You can't let people push you around," said Magennis, who is finishing up his junior year at Dedham High School. "You are the boss and you have to act like it to get people's respect. You can't act like a kid."
Some of the customers Magennis has picked up recently include the Boston office of New York City-based Guardian Life Insurance Co. and Ohio-based Collegiate Stores Corp., a buying group for the nation's college and university bookstores.
"I had a couple of meetings with him at his office and he presents himself very well," said Robert Young, an executive in Guardian's Boston office. "He is not your stereotypical computer nerd. He is a serious business person. ... We were pleased with the work he did for us. It doesn't matter how old you are, as long as you get the job done."
Jennifer Kushell, director of the Young Entrepreneurs Network, said the rapid growth in the use of the Internet has created openings for young, technologically savvy entrepreneurs.
"People in their teens and 20s were raised on computers," Kushell said. "They started using computers when they were five or six years old. There is no question that computers and the Internet have created opportunities for people in their teens and 20s. Very few get to the level John Magennis has, though."
As his business grows, Magennis is attracting increased attention. He has been featured in computer magazines and on local television stations.
While impressed by the TV coverage, Magennis' high school classmates are left a little perplexed by his venture. Typically, Magennis heads straight from high school in the afternoon to his office in Norwood.
"They don't get how I do it," Magennis said. "They hear $300,000 in sales and they think I just have $300,000 laying around. They'll say, `Why don't you drive a Mercedes?' "
Actually, Magennis said, he doesn't pay himself a salary. He said he puts any extra cash into buying new equipment or hiring employees.
"I see no reason to pay myself," he said. "I live at home and my parents provide a roof over my head. I'm not taking a salary because I want to grow the business. I definitely see it as an investment."
Magennis hopes to build Internet Exposer into a major force in Internet advertising. He said he plans to shift the company's focus from establishing web sites to designing advertisements for customers and placing them on existing sites.
One thing that is probably not in Internet Exposer's future is an initial public offering. Magennis said he did research on IPOs and decided he didn't like the idea of ceding ownership to stock holders.
"I'm glad to take input from anybody--my employees, my customers, my parents, my sisters--but I want to keep control," he said. "I created this business."
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