WebOuts redefine interactive, digital communication

While the business trend is toward communicating through new digital media, customers always appreciate connecting a name with a face and voice.

Craig Smoll ’96, started a company that provides businesses the chance to speak directly to their customers, without leaving the office.

Smoll is the co-owner of WebOuts LLC, which creates flash-based multimedia files, called WebOuts, allowing people to virtually walk out onto a Web site and speak to the viewer.                                   

"WebOuts give organizations the opportunity to relationally extend their reach and lower operational costs,” Smoll said.

Smoll emphasized that WebOuts carry a powerful message because they cater to all types of learning styles and provide a unique interaction that viewers aren’t accustomed to.

Smoll always had an interest in multimedia, but his interest in people made him pursue a degree in sociology at UW Oshkosh.

After college, Smoll started a production company in 2000 and eventually combined his interests of people and multimedia, to start WebOuts.

Growing his business was all about building relationships, something Smoll said he learned from UW Oshkosh.

“The business grew slow and steady,” Smoll said. “It was all about gaining trust of the people you work with.”

It also helped to have a team of talented partners to collaborate with.

“It’s a team effort, it’s not about me,” Smoll said. “It’s about people with varied sets of talent that combine their effort together to be successful.”

WebOuts has even had the chance to work with the Daytona 500 and other national companies like Hewlett Packard.

“People are just blown away that this was created in the Fox Valley,” Smoll said. “They think it’s a New York or Los Angeles type of technology.”

Smoll said being persistent and establishing relationships helped him grow his business and he would suggest the same to prospective entrepreneurs.

“Have a vision, set goals and keep going after it,” Smoll said. “Treat people really, really well along the way and it will pay off."