The owner is the one
who shows up.

How a guy from Colorado ended up worrying about your gutters

Dan Bascom grew up in Colorado and Washington — mountains, pine, and about half the rain south Louisiana gets. He moved to the Greater Baton Rouge area in 2013 and landed in Gonzales in 2020.

It took a few summers to understand what water does to a house down here. Sixty-two inches a year, no dry season, and live oaks that shed in spring instead of fall. Roofs and gutters in Ascension Parish work harder than they do almost anywhere he'd lived, and they never get the winter off. That's most of the reason he does what he does now.

He's been in roofing a little over five years, and he got that experience at some of the largest roofing companies in the Baton Rouge area — which is where he learned both how to do the work and how he didn't want to sell it.

How we work

Dan spent time on the national side of this business before starting Exterior Pros, and came away with a clear sense of how he didn't want to do it. The long living-room presentation. The price that drops when you stand up. The number that depends on how the conversation is going rather than on what the job actually costs.

Exterior Pros does the opposite, and it's simple enough to put in three lines:

• The owner looks at it himself — on your roof, not a salesman in your driveway.
• A written price by text that night — plus photos of anything he found up there.
• Good for 30 days, and it doesn't move. No same-day discount. No manager to call.

“If the price is more than you want to spend, tell me. I'll show you what actually needs doing now and what can wait a season. Sometimes the answer is that you don't need what you called me about — and I'd rather tell you that and be the person you call in two years.”

— Dan Bascom, owner

Licensed, insured, and local

Exterior Pros, LLC holds Louisiana Contractor Licenses 07968 & 07969 and carries liability insurance. The company is based at 11230 Naquin Rd. in Gonzales and works Ascension Parish, East Baton Rouge and Livingston. It's a member of the Home Builders Association of Greater Baton Rouge and the National Association of Home Builders, and holds an A rating with the Better Business Bureau.

Ask any contractor for a license number and proof of insurance. Plenty can't produce them.

Who's on the ladder

Mostly Dan. When there's a crew, they're people he works with regularly, not whoever a call center dispatched. You'll know who's coming before they get there.

He tries to run this the way he'd want somebody to treat his own house. That's most of the business plan.

When he's not on a roof

He fishes. Redfish and speckled trout mostly, which is the trade you make when you move down here. But he's a fly fisherman first — that's the Colorado in him — and he'll chase salmon on a fly rod when he and his wife are back visiting family in the Pacific Northwest. Those trips usually mean hiking too, which is the other thing he misses about that part of the country.

They travel when they can, and he's not much for resorts. He'd rather spend the week somewhere ordinary, eating where the locals eat and figuring out how a place actually works. That's taken them through a lot of Latin America, and it's why he's currently working through Spanish lessons every week — slowly, and with a very patient teacher.

He goes to church here in Ascension Parish and reads most mornings before the phone starts. It isn't something he brings to a sales call, but it's a fair amount of why the business runs the way it does: tell people the truth about their roof, charge what the job costs, and be the one they'd call again.