How to Bootstrap Your Business Starting up a business is a full-time job. So how do you manage it when you already have a full-time job? Here's how a few entrepreneurs juggled both to payoff.

Erica Zidel knew trying to raise funds for her startup would be a full-time job. She worried that chasing after capital would distract her from building the best product she could. So, rather than sweat the investment game, she has spent two years holding down a day job while bootstrapping her new company on the side.

During business hours, the Boston resident works as a management consultant. Evenings and weekends, she puts on her startup hat.

"I've basically been working two full-time jobs," says Zidel, founder and CEO of Sitting Around, an online community that makes it easy for parents to find and coordinate babysitting co-ops in their neighborhoods. It's a hectic schedule--schizophrenic, even--but it's also thrilling. "When I woke up this morning, I realized that it was Monday, and I got excited," Zidel says.