Wyandotte Guitar Teacher Gives Lessons Worldwide from the Comfort of His Home

Most students of guitar teacher Rob Bourassa live on another continent.

Yet he never leaves his Wyandotte home when someone in a place such as England, Thailand or Dubai needs a lesson.

Utilizing the power of the Internet, Bourassa’s teaching is done over a webcam using Skype. The 49-year-old father of four began using the program in 2007 in lieu of paying for a building to teach in or traveling to meet students.

“Skype is so much easier,” Bourassa said. “There’s no overhead, no gas. Skype doesn’t cost a thing.”

Bourassa said he has hundreds of students who take lessons from him online. Many only take occasional lessons, he said, while others are regular students. The cost is $25 for a 30-minute lesson.

The Wyandotte man is following a national trend outlined in a new study released Tuesday which shows that one in four Americans ages 44 to 70 are interested in starting a business or a nonprofit venture in the next five to 10 years.

More than one-third (37 percent) of Americans in the same age group have already started businesses or nonprofit organizations and, of these, 42 percent are still actively involved in their ventures.

The study, "Encore Entrepreneurs: Creating Jobs, Meeting Needs," was funded by MetLife Foundation and released by Civic Ventures, a San Francisco-based think tank on boomers, work and social purpose.

An Entrepreneur from Childhood

For Bourassa, teaching via Skype wasn’t the first time he achieved success by taking an unconventional route in his musical career.

As a young boy, Bourassa said, he learned to play guitar on his own, getting very little formal instruction.

“I just practiced all the time and I never took lessons,” Bourassa said.

By age 12, he had learned enough to start teaching adults at a local music store.

As a student, his after-school job was teaching guitar at the now-closed Jackson Pratt Music. His extracurricular activity through high school was playing in a bluegrass band, which he traveled with across the country each summer.

At graduation time, Bourassa skipped college and set out on the road with another band.

As a traveling musician after high school, he said, he was on the road so much he lacked a permanent residence for a while.

Returning Home to Wyandotte

After getting married, he settled back in the Detroit area, and over the course of time, returned to Wyandotte, where he still lives today.

He opened the Bourassa Guitar Studio in Royal Oak, while also working as the music director at Greenfield Village.

The Royal Oak studio was successful, he said, but he decided to close it 12 years later to try something different. That's when he discovered Skype. 

A student of his had recently moved to Arizona and asked Bourassa to give him a lesson over the Internet. Reluctantly, he agreed and did the lesson using Skype.

Immediately during the lesson, Bourassa became intrigued by the idea of using Skype for teaching.

“I was sitting in my house here in Wyandotte, drinking a cup of coffee and teaching a lesson in Arizona,“ Bourassa said. 

After closing the Royal Oak studio, Bourassa initially traveled to teach at the homes of certain students. Within two months of discovering Skype, however, he made the online program his sole method of teaching guitar.

Students were apprehensive at first, Bourassa said, but quickly embraced the new medium for learning.

"I like taking people that don’t do well and teaching them how to play. I like being able to break through the limits of whatever is stopping them. That’s fun for me."

Bourassa created a YouTube channel with several free lessons and uses it as the sole method of advertising.

“I don’t pay for advertising at all,” Bourassa said. “I don’t even have a Yellow Pages ad anymore.”

International Acclaim

Going online has attracted people from all over the world, Bourassa said. Today, most of his students are people from the United Kingdom, with others in Hong Kong and Singapore. Only a few live in the United States, he said.

The online factor, he said, creates opportunity for people in places where quality guitar instruction is lacking or is nonexistent.

Paul Baildon, 54, of Gloucestershire, Scotland, said he began taking lessons from Bourassa for that reason.

“I took guitar lessons before approaching Rob,” Baildon said. “The power of Skype is that it takes away that geographical constraint and allows you to be taught by truly talented teachers. Rob definitely falls under that banner.”

Baildon said using Skype for lessons is even easier than meeting with a teacher in person as Bourassa can easily send along other materials, such as video tutorials, to study when the lesson is over.

John Lawson of Edinburgh, Scotland, discovered Bourassa through YouTube. The 51-year-old said he was so impressed by Bourassa's teaching style that he now takes weekly online lessons.

“Rob is clearly an expert guitar player,” Lawson said. “He’s very patient. If you don’t understand, he’ll find another way until you do.”

Helping people accomplish something they struggle with is what Bourassa said he enjoys most about teaching guitar.

“I like getting results,” he said. “I like taking people that don’t do well and teaching them how to play. I like being able to break through the limits of whatever is stopping them. That’s fun for me.”

Bourassa is hosting , on Saturday at the .

You can find more articles from this ongoing series, “Dispatches: The Changing American Dream” from across the country at The Huffington Post.