I want to be straight with you about something most entrepreneurship content glosses over: building a business while working full-time doesn't always look like disciplined 5am hustle. Sometimes it looks like sitting in a cold house with no electricity, making eggs on a gas fireplace, and finally having enough quiet to hear yourself think clearly for the first time in months.
That's how Canyon Digital Assets actually started. Not with a business plan or a launch strategy. With an ice storm and seven days of forced stillness that gave me no choice but to sit with the decision I had already half-made.
What Full-Time Actually Looked Like
I made a two-year commitment to the lumber yard. Operations manager — running the team, managing inventory, coordinating deliveries, handling the constant movement of materials and the people issues that come with any operation that size. Good money. Real responsibility. And 12-hour days that left me with almost nothing by the time I got home.
I'm in excellent shape — body, mind, and spirit. I don't say that as a boast. I say it because even being in excellent shape, 12-hour days of physical and operational intensity wear you out in a way that doesn't fully reset overnight. After a day of moving materials, fielding orders, managing delivery trucks, and dealing with personnel issues — who wants to come home and open a laptop?
Nobody. That's the honest answer. And anyone who tells you otherwise is either working a different kind of job or not being truthful about how they felt at the end of the day.
The personal things piled up. My house had been sitting 16 months from the slab pour to still not being moved into. Not because I couldn't figure it out. Because I never had the time or energy to push it across the finish line. I could have borrowed money or spent more to get it done faster — but that's not how I'm built. I knew what things cost and I wasn't going to pay for the luxury of impatience. The house would get done when it got done, the right way, on my terms.
What I Knew About the Web That Most People Didn't
Here's something that doesn't show up in most of my professional biography: I've been around websites since before most people knew what one was. I owned RhondaEvans.com for over twenty years — longer than most businesses last. And for a stretch, I worked as a webmaster running all updates on DailyHoroscopes.com, a psychic services site owned by my best friend's mother.
Louisiana. Of course. 😄
But the point is real. I understood how websites worked, what made them function, how content got indexed and found. When I started thinking about Canyon Digital Assets, I wasn't learning from zero. I was reconnecting with something I had always understood — and combining it with 15 years of contractor relationships across Northeast Louisiana that no marketing agency operating out of Dallas or Atlanta could replicate.
The idea wasn't new. The timing was finally right.
The Conversation That Mattered
Before I registered a single domain, I talked to Harper and Morgan. Not a formal meeting — just a real conversation about whether this was something they'd actually want to be part of.
What I was listening for wasn't competence. I already knew they were capable. I was listening for excitement versus dread. There's a difference between someone who will help you because they feel obligated and someone who lights up because they can see what this could become. Harper and Morgan lit up. They know their mother has relationships across Northeast Louisiana that took fifteen years to build. They know the trades market. They're tech-native in a way I had to earn the hard way. The combination made sense to them immediately.
That was the green light.
On January 18th, I registered the domain names for Canyon Digital Assets.
Seven Days Later — Winter Storm Fern
I had planned to take a month off around the holidays to finally finish the house and move in. Get the personal side of my life caught up. Rest. Breathe. Then come back to work with a clear head.
On January 25th, Winter Storm Fern hit. No electricity. No internet. Stuck in a house that wasn't finished, with a gas fireplace that became my kitchen, my heat source, and my companion for the better part of a week. I made eggs on it. Made coffee on it. Stayed warm by it. And I thought.
"Sometimes the universe takes away your distractions and forces you to sit with the decisions you've already half-made. The ice storm didn't create Canyon Digital Assets. It just made the noise stop long enough for me to hear clearly that I had already decided."
Seven days between registering those domain names and being cut off from the world. Seven days to sit with what I had just committed to, with no email, no calls, no obligations — just the fireplace and the quiet and the clarity that comes when everything else stops.
By the time the power came back on, I wasn't uncertain anymore.
I went back to work on February 2nd. Not rested — that month off hadn't been what I needed it to be. But resolved. There's a difference.
What the Military Built That Made This Possible
I want to be honest about one thing: the discipline that made it possible to keep pushing through an exhausting job while building something new on the side — that didn't come from motivation or inspiration. It came from twenty years of service.
Military discipline is misunderstood. People picture someone barking orders or running at 4am because they enjoy suffering. That's not what it is. What it actually is — the thing that transfers to civilian life and entrepreneurship — is the ability to make the same decision the same way regardless of how you feel that day.
In the Navy, you don't skip a maintenance check because you're tired. The aircraft doesn't care how you feel. The standard is the standard. You meet it or you don't. I spent twenty years having that expectation applied to everything I did, until it stopped being an external requirement and became an internal one.
When I was running the lumber yard and also trying to build CDA — the days when I had nothing left and still had things to do — that internal standard is what carried it. Not excitement. Not momentum. Just the ingrained habit of doing what needs to be done because that's what you do.
You can't shortcut that. It takes years to build and it becomes the most valuable thing you own.
Knowing You Can Walk Away Changes Everything
Twenty years in the military means you move every couple of years. Every duty station is temporary. Every assignment has an end date. You get very comfortable with the idea that nothing is forever — and that comfort becomes a kind of freedom that most people don't have.
When I made my two-year commitment to the lumber yard, I knew from day one I could honor it and then walk away. That two years was a push, not a sentence. I've looked at harder things than a two-year job commitment and come out the other side. The military gave me that perspective and I've never stopped being grateful for it.
Walking away on your own terms, having honored your commitment completely, is a completely different experience than burning out and quitting. I wasn't running from anything. I was walking toward something. There's a difference — and the people around you can feel it.
What I'd Tell Someone In the Middle of It
The exhaustion is real. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. If you're working a demanding job and trying to build something on the side, you are going to have days — maybe weeks — where the business gets almost nothing from you. That's not failure. That's life.
What matters is that you don't quit the idea during the exhausted stretches. The idea doesn't need your energy every day. It needs your commitment to still be there when the energy comes back.
Talk to the people you want to build with before you build. The conversation I had with Harper and Morgan — listening for excitement instead of obligation — was more important than any business plan. Build with people who want to be there.
And if life gives you a forced week of stillness — a storm, an illness, a circumstance that takes the noise away — don't waste it on anxiety. Sit with what you've been too busy to hear. The answers are usually already there. You just need the quiet to find them.
If you want to talk about what it looks like to build something real in the Monroe and West Monroe market — what the opportunity is, who the customers are, what it actually takes — reach out. That conversation is always worth having.
Rhonda Evans is the founder of Canyon Digital Assets LLC and a 20-year Navy veteran based in West Monroe, Louisiana. She launched Canyon Digital Assets while working full-time at a regional lumber supplier and transitions to running it full-time in 2026. She writes about entrepreneurship, construction, real estate investing, and building generational wealth from scratch.