>>>I'm interested to hear stories from consultants about when they realized the time was right to go out on their own.
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>>In my case I worked for a guy who was a consultant for 3 years and was his ONLY employee. During that time I learned how he went about handling the business side of running a company. I already had 10+ years of programming experience when I met him and had worked for small and large organziations in the past. After working for him for several years I took another position somewhere else for a few months, then stumbled across a 'tele-commute' gig - so I started that and never looked back. The 3 years I spent sharing a tiny office with the consultant has proved to be quite handy.
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>That is my major roadblock - I have no idea where to start to learn the business end of things.

Well, at lot of it is just common sense and knowing how to properly communicate with someone. Any books you can dig up on running a small biz is good - and check out your local Chamber of Commerce.

>I'm starting to get really sick of working at places that are more about politics than good work. I feel that where I'm at now, my good suggestions and ideas are ignored and the only reason I can think of this happening is because possibly people are threatened. They don't care that I can go home and exploit a security vulnerability that I have been complaining about for 2 years to post stuff to their GL. They don't care that the website runs like crap and nobody wants to use it. They just don't want to accept anything as less than a huge success, and put on the blinders about the stuff that needs to be fixed.
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>I'm getting really tired of taking orders from business people who have no business telling me specifically how to do my job.

hahaha. - one thing to keep in mind. When you're in biz for yourself, suddenly EVERYONE of your clients your boss.