Integrators '20 under 40' 2017—Justin Owen

Justin Owen, 39

President and owner, Owen Security Solutions

Calhoun, Ga.

Justin Owen is the president and second-generation owner of Owen Security Solutions. His father, Gary Owen, started the company in 1973.

Owen joined the company full-time as a sales representative in 2001, at a time where the business was growing incrementally with its focus on residential and small business, Owen said. “Once I came onboard and started learning the business, we started getting more diversified and pursuing more commercial projects and customers,” he said.

Owen has held a variety of sales-focused roles. He became the sales manager in 2003, the vice president in 2006, and he became Owen Security Solutions' president and purchased the company from his father in 2008. “From 2010 [to] now, we've experienced a lot of rapid growth and we've been having a lot of fun doing it.”

Now, Owen's “day-to-day focus is growth, big picture ideas, the acquisition identification and negotiations,” Owen said. Acquisitions are a new focus for the company; Owen Security completed its first purchase in 2016, followed up by two more that year and another two in 2017.

“What I like best about our industry is … the technology evolution. I know that for a long time there wasn't a lot of innovation for our industry. We stayed on the digital dialer, phone line monitoring for quite some time,” he said, adding that when he joined the industry, he was just starting to see innovation with cellular technologies and the Internet.

“It's a really exciting time right now to see how technology, and Wi-Fi, and the Internet of Things are merging into the security market,” said Owen. “Now we're getting to give more value to the security system.”