Phil McElhaney is one up on most of his fellow baby boomers. He's on his third career.

The Midland Valley native decided to end his first career as a certified public accountant at 40 to become an entrepreneur. His second career took off in the 1980s when he began investing in funeral homes throughout Georgia, Alabama and Florida.

Now 61, Mr. McElhaney is in the midst of his third venture, this time focused on life, not death, with a retail health clinic in Evans.

"There's a lot of folks who do that, get done with their career, but they're used to working all their lives. Everyone needs a mission in life. I refer to what I'm doing now as my mission," Mr. McElhaney said.

The mission is called ExpressHealth. Tucked between a gift shop and a therapeutic chair store on North Belair Road, it is a clinic populated by nurse practitioners. No insurance is needed, everything is pre-priced and they want people treated and out the door in less than 30 minutes.

Mr. McElhaney was in the middle of an eight-year sabbatical, scouring the country for a new entrepreneurial opportunity, when the idea for ExpressHealth found him -- his wife injured her ankle during a Fourth of July get-together.

In typical fashion, when he gets an idea, he studies it and runs with it, said Lewis Smith, a certified public accountant in Thomson who was one of Mr. McElhaney's first business partners three decades ago.

"He came to my 60th birthday party and I introduced him to my son as the guy that everything he touched turned to gold," Mr. Smith said. "He was an even better entrepreneur in his later life than when we were CPAs."

The Midas touch isn't luck -- it has come with some smart choosing, Mr. McElhaney said.

"I like to get into these businesses where the trends are all in your favor," he said.

ExpressHealth is very much a trend business; such retail clinics have been popping up in pharmacies and department stores for a few years now as an answer to crowded doctors' offices and hospital emergency rooms.

"This business takes focus and devotion. I've only been out of town three times since late '06," Mr. McElhaney said. That was for a wedding in Greenville, S.C., a visit to his daughter in Charleston and a homeowner's association meeting in Fripp Island.

He's as busy as an accountant in tax season, but he doesn't miss his former career as one. His own taxes aren't even done yet.

Career one

Raised on Pine Log Road close to Beech Island, Mr. McElhaney was the second son of a maintenance supervisor and a licensed practical nurse. Born in 1947, he came to Charles and Anna McElhaney in the beginning of the Baby Boom.

"We didn't have anything but they loved us both," Mr. McElhaney said.

He was a sickly child, suffering from asthma. There were some nights where the family feared he wouldn't live through the night, recalled brother Mike.

Young Phil was stuck inside the house in the wintertime.

"He couldn't stick his head out the door without catching something," Mike said. "He spent a lot of time with the books and I spent a lot of time with my dad."

Following his dad around a lot led to Mike following in his footsteps, with a 30-year career as a maintenance supervisor. Phil McElhaney would go in a different direction, finding an interest in accounting and bookkeeping while in high school.

"I was a solid C student in high school, never really had much ambition back then except hunting and fishing," Mr. McElhaney said.

He took his schooling at Baptist College of Charleston more seriously than high school, however.

"My mom sent me there. My dad had died (in 1963). My mom had heard a speaker at church talk about the college, required to take so many hours of Bible study and attend prayer service every week. She just liked that," Mr. McElhaney said. "She was paying the bill, so I went where she wanted me to go. It was good for me."

His first job out of college was with his father's former employer, JM Huber Corp., as a cost accountant near Macon. He moved back to Aiken after two years to be a CPA trainee and went to work for his second wife's uncle after passing the exams.

In the 1970s, Mr. McElhaney went into business for himself, snatching up Mr. Smith as his first business partner for their Davis Road firm. Until ExpressHealth, Mr. McElhaney always had business partners for his ventures.

"He was an excellent CPA. He paid a lot of attention to detail," Mr. Smith said. "Not everybody appreciated him. He's a larger guy now. But when I first knew him in the CPA business, people always equated (company) size with results. He was the biggest go-getter of a small guy than anybody I knew."

The firm got bigger, collecting more partners and acquiring another firm before merging into regional powerhouse Maulden & Jenkins in 1984.

A few years later, Mr. McElhaney would come home one day and tell his wife that he didn't think he could stay as a CPA all of his life. A 16-year accounting career ended.

There are two things certain in life: Taxes and death.

Mr. McElhaney took his career from one to the other.

Career two

A friend, Randy Hatcher, had asked him to join him in the funeral home business and Mr. McElhaney made the jump.

"There's a lot easier occupations than being a CPA," Mr. McElhaney said.

Mike McElhaney said it was surprising that his brother would suddenly go in such a different direction after building a successful accounting firm.

"It takes a lot of guts to do that," he said.

At the same time, it wasn't a surprise.

"He was sitting there as a CPA seeing a lot of business transactions but couldn't get involved in them because of the conflict of interest it would create," Mike McElhaney said.

After a few years, Mr. McElhaney sold out his interest in the Hatcher funeral homes to build his own on Wheeler Road, getting the Poteet funeral home family to become his partner there.

Mr. McElhaney also bought into some kidney dialysis centers in south Georgia.

"Phil has always been willing to try something new," Mike McElhaney said. "He was always looking for something new and challenging."

His career in funeral homes got deeper.

"I met a guy in Canada who started a chain of funeral homes. He made an offer to me that I couldn't refuse: I can be a regional partner, meaning I own 10 percent under his corporation," Mr. McElhaney said.

Five years later, his interest was bought out.

"At that point, I started my own company here in Augusta and had a partner. We bought 30 funeral homes, built some, too." They were in Columbus, Macon, Norcross.

A dozen years in the funeral business came to an end in 1998, when a Houston company, Service Corp. International, bought out his Preferred Funeral Services and then his funeral home with the Poteet family.

Mr. McElhaney raised some eyebrows again by announcing that he was going on a sabbatical. It was time for some hunting and fishing.

He built a house on Fripp Island, south of Charleston, and found his favorite fishing hole at nearby Brays Island.

"Used to catch the biggest fresh water bass. Could hit on anything, a cricket or worm, piece of bread. If you got it out there to them, you were going to catch some fish," Mr. McElhaney recalled.

An idle Phil McElhaney was short-lived.

"He told me he was going to retire, go to Fripp and build a home there. I thought, that's not going to last," Mike McElhaney said. It wasn't long before his brother called up to say that he was bored with retirement.

Phil McElhaney started a nationwide hunt for his next entrepreneurial venture.

He took some of his money and threw it into a Charleston angel capital organization (a group of affluent individuals who provide capital for business startups). From that experience in investing in big ideas that have the chance to become prosperous companies, Mr. McElhaney tried in 2003 to start such a fund in Augusta.

"That did not form well. You need 50 members to get that kind of group started. We had 25 people sign up for that," Mr. McElhaney said. Such a group was being pushed as a funding vehicle for some of the new companies coming into the Medical College of Georgia's bioscience incubator.

Through the Charleston group, Mr. McElhaney has money placed with two young companies there.

"They haven't 'exited' yet. They're about four years old. They have potential for big breakthroughs. That is the frustrating part to people. They're used to making an investment, next year they've got it for sale. You need patience and to leave the money there and let it take its course," Mr. McElhaney said.

Career three

By early 2006, despite traveling the country for prospects, the eight-year sabbatical had not yielded Mr. McElhaney's next entrepreneurial project.

On a yacht in South Carolina to see fireworks on the Fourth of July, wife Ruby McElhaney hurt her ankle. It was off to an urgent care facility for treatment. The care provider was a nurse practitioner, a registered nurse with a master's degree who can diagnose and prescribe medicine like a doctor.

In McElhaney fashion, he got an idea and ran with it -- a standalone retail health clinic staffed by nurse practitioners, quicker than a doctor's office and cheaper than urgent care or an emergency room.

It is not an idea he ever would have come up with on his own, he says.

"There's a hand in the sky guiding you. The good Lord puts you where he wants you to be with people he wants you to be with," Mr. McElhaney said.

It is the only time in his business career that he opened a business himself. Though there are advisers, including his brother, there are no partners with financial backing involved in the clinic.

ExpressHealth opened in July with up-front pricing -- all treatments less than $100 -- and a marketing promise to have people treated and out the door within half an hour.

Mike McElhaney said it is a business that is following a trend. There are millions of Americans who don't have access to health insurance and therefore don't seek medical treatment.

Dr. Fred Merrill, an Evans family physician, said he has respect for Mr. McElhaney for wanting to tackle a health care issue in the country today.

"He's doing something about it. Our nation hasn't done anything about it," Dr. Merrill said. "Most private practices have had a difficult time doing it. He's doing it and he's not even medically trained."

ExpressHealth started out as MedExpress. The name was recently changed, the result of a company in West Virginia beating Mr. McElhaney to the federal trademark office.

"I call it rocks in the road. You have to move the rocks out of the way to success," Mr. McElhaney said. "Just about every business I've been involved in, there are these obstacles to overcome."

So Mr. McElhaney has new business cards. He is not big on titles, so there isn't one on his card. It is a team effort, he explained, and titles sometimes get in the way of good teamwork and employees speaking their minds.

"I try to associate myself with good people. My advisers are good people that will do the right thing every time. That is a big plus in business today. There are so many questions about integrity and ethics," Mr. McElhaney said.

ExpressHealth has not become a chain yet. The team wants to collect more data on who comes to the clinic and when.

The business has kept him out of civic organizations.

He hasn't hunted or gone fishing since starting the health clinic. Perhaps there is some of that in his future.

Mr. McElhaney has picked his successor, a Charleston businessman who is leading a different company now. He said he's seen too many visionaries not know when it is time to step aside and let an operational-oriented manager take over.

"I'll never really retire. I'm the kind of person that will drop dead here at my desk, which is good," Mr. McElhaney said.

If it happens that way, he won't be doing his taxes. He ships those out to a CPA firm.

Reach Tim Rausch at (706) 823-3352 or timothy.rausch@augustachronicle.com.