This essay as told is based on a conversation with Rick Neuhoff, 65, a homeowner in Portland, Oregon, who rents out his indoor pool using Swimply. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Before COVID got worse, I did marketing for law firms. COVID had practically killed my business, because lawyers did not want to expand their portfolio because the courts were closed.

So I was home and I was stuck.

For a while I drove for DoorDash. One day, my wife was with me while I was giving birth and we saw on the doorbell video camera that something had been left at our door. We assumed it was medication, but it was this bag from Swimply, an app that lets you rent your private pool.

The reason we wanted a pool at our house was so my wife could exercise when she was home. He had recently been diagnosed with diabetes and exercising daily became essential.

Here in Portland, obviously, their public records are pretty public, so Swimply knew we had this indoor pool and they left a welcome bag at our door with a beach ball and a ton of information.

I convinced my wife to try it and we never looked back.

We charge $75 an hour to rent our indoor pool.

I don’t think I was driving for more than a year before we gave Swimply a chance. In two days I earned more than I earned in the entire week driving.

Within a matter of months, we were starting to do quite well. We started with a few hundred dollars a week, then we made over $1,000 a week and it kept increasing steadily.

We have been charging $75 an hour for about four years.

In my best months I made between $12,000 and $15,000 gross, but we have also had slow weeks.

Weekday mornings are when we are slower, and weekdays are slower than weekends, so we have a weekday discount of $60 per hour. Typically, we will get a reservation, or sometimes two, on weekdays, usually after school or after work.

I enjoy being able to make other people’s events feel special.

When we started renting our pool, we were a little worried that it would be uncomfortable to have people inside our house.

We quickly realized that we had to keep the door to the pool house closed because every once in a while people would just open the door and start walking in, looking for the bathroom or whatever.

But the fun and joy that is heard through the walls is truly contagious and It makes you smile even when you’re having a tough day.

We have presented a film photo shoots, photo shoots, every type of holiday party you can imagine and anniversaries.

We were approached by several swim instructors who were looking for a home for their swim school.

We briefly organized a diving school. There was a problem with their tank, so they were here for a couple of weeks while it was repaired. We’re not deep enough to dive, but I think it was better for them to continue with their classes than to just slow down.

We have had several large corporate events during the warmer weather; There is a large grass lot behind our house. We have a semi-private walled patio and then there is the pool house. During colder weather, we can accommodate up to 60 people with limited seating and a DJ in the pool house.

When the outdoor pools close, our business increases. There are a very small number of indoor pools in Portland, and of the indoor pools in our market, we are the only one that has real space to have fun.

We still have a lot more to do here, but we’ve really made significant improvements. Our pool house is still shabby chic at best, but the pool itself is amazing and the atmosphere we’ve created is as good as we’ve been able to achieve on the budget.

Thanks to COVID, Swimply allowed me to make money when my business closed. Now I have changed my business and am more flexible after recognizing an opportunity.

I’m not making exactly what I made while working with law firms (more or less), but my stress is much less, which is priceless.