I encourage you to read the following two books:

"Photography Your Way" by Chuck DeLaney
and
"The Photographer's Guide to Marketing and Self-Promotion" by Maria Piscopo

If you've never run your own business before, I suggest you pick up the "Entrepreneur 2006 Essentials" CD set by Learn2, which I found many copies of at my nearest Half Price Books.

Frankly, if the best place you can think of to find advice on starting a photography business is a 3D rendering web community, then I doubt you're ready to give up your day job just yet. Photography is a business rife with nepotism, and the best way to get jobs is to find a community of working photographers and be useful and enjoyable company to them. There are many useful organizations for this purpose: the APA, ASMP, EP, WPPI, et al.

Alternately, I suggest finding local photographers in a variety of fields and assist them. The guy you've been working for doesn't seem like he's a good model to learn from. You don't make many in photography by acting like a good bargain.

They had chained him down to things that are, and had then explained the workings of those things till mystery had gone out of the world....And when he had failed to find [wonder and mystery] in things whose laws are known and measurable, they told him he lacked imagination, and was immature because he preferred dream-illusions to the illusions of our physical creation.
      -- HP Lovecraft, The Silver Key