Well, since it’s mosquito season I thought I would replay my interview with Rockstar Millennial Brandi Stupica. 

I am super excited to introduce Brandi Stupica from the Brown Bread Mozzie Kit Company, a forward thinking entrepreneurial visionary who is here to tell us about a problem that you have probably had or know someone who has had . And Bonus she’s a Rockstar Millennial!

Tell us a little about yourself.

Since you mention me being a millennial, we all have side gigs and my day time gig is I live in Alma, Michigan, and I teach developmental psychology at the college here. I have just enough free time to start this side business of 

Brown Bread Mozzie organic mosquito control

I was just looking for something to help us all not have so many mosquito bites.

Tell me about your first gardening experience?

I grew up in Ohio, central Ohio. 

My first gardening experience, I was a child who thought I was an adult, a Teenager.

I was in Future Farmers of America (FFA)

I chose tomato gardening, and my dad tilled up like a 1/4 acre of our yard in town. 

I planted 32 tomato plants but they all died!

How did they die? On purpose like it was part of an experiment or that was an accident?

Idk if I want to call it and accident I just didn’t water them.

Well I can totally understand that. There are days in the middle of the summer or I won’t see the garden for 5 days. I just get busy like that, I can understand that. I know you have to make time to water. Do you just want to tell listeners real quick is FFA Future Farmers of America?

it used to stand for Future Farmer’s of America

we were told many times it doesn’t stand for that anymore. They were working on a new thing. 

from the FFA website: 

The official name of the organization is the National FFA Organization.

The letters “FFA” stand for Future Farmers of America. These letters are a part of our history and our heritage that will never change. But FFA is not just for students who want to be production farmers; FFA also welcomes members who aspire to careers as teachers, doctors, scientists, business owners and more.

We were told it encompasses more then farming. 

It’s kind of like 4H or Girlscouts or something?

Yeah but you get class credit for it

I learned

• how to weld
• raised rabbits
• food science

That was something new and cool. And the you have to water tomato plants was something I learned!

So you took it in high school?

Yeah I took it in high school all four years

I lived in town. I lived in rural Ohio. 

everyone took it

it was worthwhile

It started my interest in gardening and really understanding where my food came from.

I guess I grew up outside of NY City so we didn’t have, who knows it could be there and I just down’t know about it. I was interested in gardening back then.

I don’t think all schools offer it.

So tell us about the Brown Bread Mozzie. I was reading it’s called the Brown Bread Mozzie because there’s brown bread in the bottom.

I would love to do that!

I always try to be cute and funny and come up with a name

Brown Bread means cockney (london ) slang. If you’re in a certain part of London. 

I get a lot of people from Australia

means mosquito to them

So Brown Bread Mozzie just means dead mosquito

this came about

product

BTI

it’s in the ground everywhere. It was found in Israel initially in gutters or ditches that had run off for water. They isolated this bacteria and it ended up being all over the world.

But this bacteria when it’s in the water where the mosquitos lay their eggs, the eggs will ingest the bacteria and make their guts explode and they die. 

usually people use it when you already have standing water

you want

Most people have standing water because they don’t want to empty it.  If you have horses 

standing water

empty out their water trough

• sprinkle it into ponds
• bird bath

My husband and I thought why don’t you just make standing water

• attracted to water
• make a pond
• you can make standing water

put water in buckets

Every summer I complain and I would send him hunting around for standing water

putting garbage buckets around.

Im so glad you said that because I feel like I can’t take a picture in our garden without a red Folgers coffee can in it, they’re everywhere we use them for everything, compost, water, chicken food.

We put this little kit together put the BTI in the water and changed it out every couple of weeks, I didn’t have any mosquito bites that summer

I was pregnant too

I wasn’t getting them at home.

You would think the farther north.

In Michigan

Alaska 

I was just gonna say that arent’ they really big in Alaska?!

really really big

amount of breeding ground

the next summer

I rolled out this company

People  who want and have this problem already have the buckets. So they just want me to give them the bits. 

I imagine it saves on the cost of shipping. 

Yes, the cost of shipping if I send you buckets

It also gets rid of some other things you have around?

Yes

• black fly larvae
• ground gnats

You know when you see that swarm, and you walk into and you feel like you have bugs all over you.

sprinkle it on the ground

Might even want to give them more water to encourage them to live there and die.

• eating the fungus
• sprinkle it in there
• give them a bit more water too
• encourage them
• approved for organic gardening use

I heard when you were on that interview with Mike Posledsney his listenesr were gonna say what about beneficial insects? And it doesn’t harm them right. 

It’s OMRI approved right?

doesn’t harm the beneficial

People ask what if we got rid of all the mosquitos?

If we got rid of the population

world ecology

there aren’t enough animals that need mosquito

That’s not gonna happen? I mean mosquitos can be deadly right?

• dengue fever
• malaria
• zikka

been around some time before we have to worry about that. What concerns me as a developmental psychologists.

We’re not even sure about the long term consequences, we don’t know in utero the subtle differences

yeah

so

the incubation period

It could be decades

Could be some sort of euro degenerative disease that your more likely to have in middle age because you were exposed to it as a baby.

I wanna say there was a girl in my high school who got like bit by a mosquito when she had the chicken pox and it made her face have spots, she had to go through many painful procedures. IT was sad and just a fluke thing.

if you want the whole kit

• the buckets are 1 gallon
• one scoop about a tablespoon
• fill the bucket about 1/2 way
• you can dump it in your grass
• about a month the bacteria start to die and become less effective. 

You want to keep baiting mosquitos into your yard

We came back from overseas and we had a lot of rain here and our neighbor helpfully turned it over for us. When we came back we realized what a natural intervention it is because when we left we didn’t have any mosquitos

living in the jungle being like

here’s the great thing

things your listeners should know

• don’t sit around and eat it like common sense
• If you get exposed to it you’re immune to it

don’t even have the receptors so it came out like it came in

carrier that it is on

organic material

whatever plant material it is made out of

• kids put their hands in it
• dog drinks out of it
• cat
• sprinkle it in your troughs in your farm

you go out and you want to tend to your animals and your getting bit up

Same with chickens

doesn’t affect birds and worms

I can’t be more happy with it, it’s just a bacteria that you’re already exposed

I would think the animals would appreciate it because it would reduce their mosquito bites too! What about bats?

It wont hurt them

• bats don’t really fly low enough
• what’s funny about bats
• they eat insects that fly higher
• yes it won’t hurt them
• bat’s aren’t really helping you with your mosquito problem.

So, my listeners are very entrepreneurial and do you have any advice for people about the business/marketing end?

It is, confusing it’s hard

what I’ve learned its ok for it to be hard

recognize it and go forward anyway

You have to put yourself out there in ways you just don’t feel comfortable

marketing is tricky I’m still learning

currently my mentor and inspiration is Tim Ferris

wrote the The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

and has a podcast I listen to.

I’d suggest check into him.

I read the 4 Hour Work Week and have read his podcast. One you might want to check out is EoFire, but one that I don’t know why he doesn’t promote more is his girlfriends show Kate’s Take. The other one is Amy Porterfeild who has Online Marketing Made Easy. And listeners Tim Ferris’ goal is not really that you work only 4 hours a week but more that you enjoy work and he’s really into lifestyle design.

Mini retirements

Living the life you really want to live now instead of waiting for retirement. He’s into some power learning, he has like a genius IQ. I love his challenges in the beginning of his book, when I first read it I made a great friend in France who would do his challenges.

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