Living the Dream: Kelly Arms

My husband Roy and I spent the last eight years building a company and brand here in Washington. We literally built that business from the ground up. From the concrete, to the steel beams, to the logo, to the brand, to the 150-plus harvests, the 15,000 pounds of weed we grew, the 200,000 miles of driving, the $13.5 million in sales, the responsibility of keeping 25 people employed, the workflows, the procedures, the late nights, the missed family time; we did it all.

We gave up so much to build every aspect of that business.

But after eight years of hard work, our time with that company has ended. The financial investors behind the scenes have thanked us for our sacrifices by meeting with the CEO of another company (without our knowledge). They made an agreement, showed up at our farm and changed the locks on us.

They then proceeded to send Roy letters from their lawyer threatening to contact the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board and Chelan County Sherriff’s Office if he didn’t give them things they wanted like QuickBooks permissions, email logins and Instagram passwords. As you may remember, we spent the last five years fighting against Chelan County to save that business, and frankly we aren’t interested in fighting any more legal battles for that business.

A piece of advice we received was that there are two types of people in the industry: the type who use lawyers to get what they want and the type who lace up their boots and work for it.

We are the type who get to work.

So I have officially launched a new brand: Captain Yeti and the Technicolor Renegades.

The first thing I did was reach out to the family of five workers that were fired from our previous company while they had COVID. That family carefully trimmed, packaged and labeled thousands of pounds of weed with us over the years. They worked beside us through some of the hardest times and helped build the business with us. Luckily, all five moved across the state and joined the Captain Yeti team.

With the squad back together, we are bringing the same love and passion that our customers have grown to expect. But this time we have moved to all indoor grown flower. Friends in the industry who have indoor farms heard our story and offered to support us with everything from amazing flower to dedicated grow space.

We will be expanding on those relationships and working closely with our good friend Branden from Inhouse Genetics to make sure that everyone we are working with has the highest quality and most unique genetics in the state.

So now, we compete. We will let the buyers, the industry, and the market decide who they support. We are coming to the table with eight years of knowledge, our friends and our hard work. We know it doesn’t sound fair to go against a bunch of millionaires, but don’t worry, we also spotted them a greenhouse full of weed that we grew, $100,000 in orders that we sold and control of another six-figure bank account we filled for them.

We will see who is willing to work harder.

Kelly Arms is the CEO of Captain Yeti and is one of the pioneers of the legal cannabis industry. As a former pre-school teacher, she is always looking for ways to bring joy and happiness to everyone she meets and works with. She’s never seen a scooter she wouldn’t ride, loves tie-dye and bakes the best cookies you will ever eat. Her hard work and enthusiasm has helped sell more than 15,000 pounds of legal cannabis in Washington state.