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MI Express Care: a walk-in urgent care clinic in Michigan at $85K a month
MI Express Care is a walk-in urgent care and primary care clinic that sells urgent care, primary care, medical weight loss and a set of specialty services to people in Canton and Ann Arbor, Michigan, at $85K a month in revenue as reported by the founder in a September 2024 Starter Story interview.
How it started
The clinic opened in April 2014. Its founder, Dr. Umayr Azimi, is a physician from Southeast Michigan who started his career as a hospitalist, treating acutely ill patients in the hospital and then, as he puts it, often not seeing them again. He describes noticing the business side of medicine taking a larger role and physicians being devalued, then spending time with private practice owners to see what worked and where they were failing to meet community needs. He moved into outpatient medicine and opened a clinic near his hometown of Ann Arbor, holding several jobs at once: medical director, lead physician, and administration and marketing director.
It started small — two employees, by his account. The pandemic then cut both ways. At the beginning of COVID-19 there were days when no patients walked in; shortly after, as more people fell ill and urgent care became a first-line testing and treatment site, patient numbers rose quickly. The clinic changed how it delivered care and supported staff through that period, and in 2024 it opened a second location in Ann Arbor, with each site offering urgent care and occupational medicine, primary care, and medical weight loss and obesity medicine.
What it sells and how it charges
The official website, fetched on 2026-09-30, describes MI Express Care as a walk-in medical clinic in Canton and Ann Arbor, with walk-ins and same-day appointments and a promise of little to no wait time.
The service menu is broad. Under urgent care it lists sports and work physicals, pediatric services, injuries and illness, lab services, on-site X-ray, flu shots, occupational medicine, STD/STI testing, UTI treatment, pneumonia treatment, travel medicine, allergy treatment, DOT physicals, bug bite treatment, sore throat and URI treatment, wound care and sports injury treatment. Under primary care it lists diabetes management, high blood pressure, asthma care and management, women's health, telemedicine, preventive health screenings, osteoarthritis care, men's health, and erectile dysfunction. It also lists medical weight loss, IV hydration therapy, regenerative medicine, shockwave therapy, PRP therapy and steroid joint injections, plus a long tail of pain conditions — knee, shoulder, hip, back and sciatica, plantar fasciitis, tennis and golfer's elbow, Achilles and tendonitis, neck pain, arthritis and joint pain.
Four services have their own online booking path on the site: urgent care ("Walk-ins welcome. Reserve your spot online to reduce wait time."), primary care, medical weight loss and shockwave therapy.
On price, the website does not state one. There is no pricing page and no price list in the pages reviewed; what the site does publish is a "Pay Your Bill" section split into urgent care payments and primary care payments, an accepted insurances page, and the claim that most insurances are accepted.
How it got its first customers and what kept growth going
The first patients came from care itself. As the founder says:
"Our commitment to exceptional patient care has lead to strong word-of-mouth referrals from our current patients, which significantly contributes to our growth and reputation."
On top of referrals, the clinic ran a patient acquisition campaign built on paid advertising, retargeting campaigns aimed at people who had already interacted with it, and strategic email campaigns to past patients and to people who had shown interest but had not booked. He also describes the period of growth in blunt terms — "long nights of working 18+ hours a day and being nimble."
The numbers
Everything below comes from the founder's own account in the September 2024 interview.
| Metric | Figure | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly revenue | $85K | Founder-reported, September 2024 interview |
| Team | 9 full-time staff; 15 employees total including part-time | At time of interview |
| Founders | 1 | At time of interview |
| Started | April 2014 | Founder-reported |
| Base | Canton, Michigan | Founder-reported |
| Second location | Ann Arbor, Michigan, opened 2024 | Founder-reported |
| Starting staff | 2 employees | Founder-reported |
| Startup funding | Savings, no-interest loans from friends and family, bank financing | Founder-reported; no amount given |
The founder said no amount for the startup cost. He described the financing as savings built by living below his means over several years, no-interest loans from friends and family during the startup phase, and traditional bank financing, with no crowdfunding involved.
How it compares
For context, 1M.chat's analysis of 1,997 businesses with founder-reported revenue in Starter Story interviews (2015–2026) — a self-selected sample of founders who chose to be interviewed, not a random sample of all businesses — puts MI Express Care in the Health, fitness & wellness category, where 76 businesses report revenue. In that category:
- Median monthly revenue: $74.5K
- Share at $1M a year or more: 46%
- Median employees: 3.0
- Share started by one founder: 59%
- Top growth channels, of the 52 businesses with channel information: organic social media 71%, SEO and organic search 48%, paid ads 40%, word of mouth and referrals 36%
On that basis, 1M.chat places MI Express Care close to the category median on revenue. Two differences stand out: at 15 employees it is well above the category's median of 3.0, and its acquisition mix leans on paid advertising and retargeting in a category where paid ads appear in 40% of the businesses that report channels and word of mouth in 36%.
What a founder can take from it
- Let the service itself do the first round of acquisition. Referrals came before the ad spend, not after it. Paid advertising, retargeting and email were layers added on top of a reputation, not a substitute for one.
- Budget for a period with no salary. The founder says directly that initial finances may be slow despite good projections and that a founder might not draw a salary for a substantial period. His recommendation is a backup financial plan and real reserves.
- Expect the plan to break, and hold it loosely. His stated lesson is a meticulously crafted business plan paired with the expectation that things will not go to plan — flexibility and adaptability as the working method.
- Multi-site expansion came late, not first. April 2014 to a second location in 2024 is a long runway. Nothing here suggests opening a second site early.
- You do not have to reinvent the category. His framing: unique value helps, but simply doing things better than the competition without reinventing the wheel is also a valid position — as long as the value proposition to the public is clear.
Sources
Revenue, team and start-cost figures are what the founder reported at the interview date, not current figures and not a prediction of what you will earn. Product and pricing facts come from the business's own website as checked on 30 September 2026. Method & sources · Disclosure