If you ask Mike McQuary how many ventures he's been involved in since he left Earthlink in 2002, be sure you have enough time on your hands.

McQuary's ventures have ranged from an Internet-friendly record label, a merchant bank/private equity firm that invests in emerging companies, an Internet billboard company, real estate, a restaurant, a California television station, and most recently, an electric car company.

It's been an eventful career for someone who spent about 10 years working for Mobil Chemical before becoming president and COO of MindSpring to help his friend Charles Brewer manage the then-fledgling Internet services company.

Actually, McQuary helped Brewer write MindSpring's original business plan. But he kept his corporate job until Brewer said he needed help. As Brewer told McQuary: "You report to me, and everybody else in the company reports to you."

The executive team of Brewer-McQuary, the idealist and the pragmatist respectively, "built a company from zero to being a billion-dollar company."

Then Earthlink acquired MindSpring in 2000, and Brewer left the company soon after. McQuary stayed on, feeling obligated to help the company through the merger.

But by 2002, it became clear there was not enough room at the top for McQuary as president/COO and Garry Betty, Earthlink's CEO, who has since died.

(By the way, the now struggling Earthlink is holding its annual meeting this afternoon.) "I wasn't ready to leave when I left. I was pushed out," McQuary said candidly. "In retrospect, it's been wonderful. It's one of the best decisions that got made for me."

At first the change was a shock. "It was an odd experience to go from having 1,000 e-mails to return to having two, or having 40 voicemails to two," McQuary said. But the timing worked.

On a personal level, McQuary and his wife had just had triplets in addition to their 3-year-old daughter. "The fertility drugs they tell you about? They work," McQuary said.

And on a professional level, the separation with Earthlink left him free to explore new business ventures.

"I made enough money to do anything, but not enough money to do nothing," said McQuary, 47. "It's allowed me the luxury to work on things that didn't have an immediate payout, but that I believe have a long-term payout."

It also gave him an opportunity to invest in ventures that he believes in.

His partners in most of these ventures are Bert Ellis, a longtime media and technology entrepreneur who started iXL, and Bahns Stanley, formerly of the Weather Channel.

In talking about the new electric car company, RTEV, McQuary began talking about "three macro-societal issues."

The price of oil is skyrocketing, which is changing the way people think about transportation. Climate change and global warming are giving rise to new environmental concerns. And there's "a huge awareness that our foreign policy has largely been dictated by our dependence on foreign oil," McQuary said.

McQuary then begins talking about the lack of a U.S. energy policy as well as his lack of fear in taking on the major automobile manufacturers.

"In the days of MindSpring, our competitors were IBM, AT&T and all the Baby Bells," he said.

His record label, Brash Music, has a similar theme. Discover the societal trends and figure out how best to respond.

"The Internet was severely undermining the music industry's business model," he said. "I became convinced that we could create a record label that would embrace technology, keep its overhead low and make deals with artists that would have them participate in career decisions and share financially in the reward of their success."

The label has worked with all different kinds of music, from alternative rock with the now defunct band Jump Little Children to Christian rock.

All his new ventures have made it easy for McQuary, who refers to himself as McQ because there are so many Mikes in the world, to distance himself from MindSpring/Earthlink.

"I don't recognize it as mine anymore," McQuary said. "It's not the company that Charles and I built."

"Squawk Box" is coming to Atlanta

The Squawk Box will be squawking in Atlanta on the morning of May 16.

CNBC will broadcast live from the Georgia Aquarium and the new World of Coca-Cola from 6 to 9 a.m. that Friday, interviewing some of Georgia's top executives.

Those that have already signed on include: Delta Air Lines CEO Richard Anderson; Atlanta Federal Reserve President Dennis Lockhart; Aflac CEO Dan Amos; Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus; SunTrust CEO James Wells; developer John Dewberry; Chick-fil-A President Dan T. Cathy; Southern Co. CEO David Ratcliffe and Invesco CEO Martin Flanagan.

The show's co-anchors —- Joe Kernen, Becky Quick and Carl Quintanilla —-will all be on site to interview local executives. It is part of CNBC's "Squawk Across America," which is being sponsored by American Century Investments.

The show visited Miami in February, Washington in March and will end with Boston in June.

msaporta@ajc.com