How the Oshry family went from @girlwithnojob to forging a new age media empire

Anyone who’s spent time on the Internet over the last decade probably knows the Oshry sisters. What started as the meme account @girlwithnojob in 2013 is today an entire media company, plus a slew of other projects that keep Claudia Oshry, her husband and three sisters almost inescapable to those of us scrolling social media on a regular basis. And while the Oshrys are not without controversy (far from it), there are lessons to be learned from this tight-knit family that has gone from Internet fame to cancellation and back again.

It began before Claudia even finished college and wanted to make jokes about the very specific era that the millennial generation was in: moving fast and furious into adulthood, trying to make sense of the societal expectations placed upon them that were occasionally accurate but also demeaning (hello, avocado toast). She started on Tumblr and moved to Instagram when she realized memes were a great way to build her audience, which was mainly female, celebrity-obsessed millennials.

With that success came The Morning Breath, a social media morning show co-hosted by Claudia and her older sister Jackie, with help behind the scenes from oldest sister Olivia and youngest sister Margo. It was only on the air from 2017 to 2018, but aired live on Facebook and Instagram by Oath (which didn’t last much longer). The focus was primarily celebrity news but allowed the sisters to showcase themselves and their relationship to each other, building them the unique and engaged audience they still have today. From the beginning, it’s been all about getting followers and viewers to be as invested in the Oshrys personally as they are about their brands.

“I really try to infuse Claudia and @girlwithnojob because we're very much the same person,” Claudia told Entrepreneur in 2017. “A lot of the time you don't know who's running these accounts and you don't really care. But my mission is to make people care about Claudia just as much as they care about @girlwithnojob.”

Although The Morning Breath was famously canceled – more on that shortly – it returned later as The Morning Toast and is today The Toast. The show in its many forms has been a rollercoaster, but is the foundation for the rest of the many, many Oshry projects.

Claudia is undoubtedly the most well-known of the group, having grown her notorious Instagram account to over 3 million followers since opening it almost 10 years ago. The account skyrocketed in popularity as Claudia was an early adopter of memes as we know them today. But all four sisters have some level of social media fame and have or have had podcasts under what can only be described as the family media company, the Toast News Network.

  • Olivia is the oldest and has often been the most private, although her public Instagram profile @oliviaoshry currently has 86.9K followers.

  • Jackie used to be known for her Instagram handle @jackieoproblems but switched over to @jackieoshry, where she has 294K followers.

    • She also runs The Redheads, a book club and podcast with 69.6K followers on Instagram. The Toast Instagram that she runs with Claudia and their team has 261K followers.

  • Claudia has 3.1M Instagram followers on @girlwithnojob, another 266K followers on @claudwithnojob, and 241K on TikTok.

    • More on Claudia’s extracurriculars in a sec, but worth mentioning she casually has a couple of singles.

  • Margo, the youngest, has 138K followers on her personal account @margoshry and another 56.7K on TikTok.

Claudia’s husband, Ben Soffer, has also seen huge levels of success on his own Instagram, @boywithnojob, where he has 1.5 million followers. You probably won’t be surprised to know that he also hosts a podcast (with actor Josh Peck) but these days, it seems like his main focus is being the CEO of Spritz Society, a canned cocktail business that he co-founded with Claudia and Jackie in 2019.

In addition to the Toast News Network, which struck a major deal with Dear Media last year, Claudia has spun her brand into a comedy career that includes a special, a book and a tour. If anyone doubts her capabilities, they only need to look at the recent Cynthia Rowley fashion show, which opted to pass on tradition and instead dress comedians for a standup show that featured Claudia alongside comedy stars like Nikki Glaser, Ego Nwodim and Michelle Buteau.

We could go on for a long time about what the Oshry sisters are up to professionally, but what we’re really here to talk about is their talent at building a loyal audience that will jump on board every time they stretch their brand. How do we know they’re loyal? It’s not because of the success, but because of the controversy.

There have been several scandals, including allegations that Claudia was using content created by others as her own. (Buzzfeed wrote in 2020: “Claudia too has been accused on Twitter of stealing jokes, but it doesn't appear that she ever responded to those claims.”) But the biggest was in 2018 when The Daily Beast published a story revealing that the sisters’ mother is the far-right political activist and commentator Pamela Geller, and that the sisters themselves had previously posted many hate-filled Tweets. Claudia and Jackie saw The Morning Breath canceled and sponsorships dropped.

The Oshrys managed a comeback, though, and have kept much of their fan base intact despite continued criticism. Although much of that is warranted, there’s no denying that they are still extremely influential, especially with The Toast consistently charting well and recently celebrating 1,000 episodes.

The credit for that should go entirely to their audience. The “Toasters” are a big, intense community built on their love for the sisters. The Oshrys have gone as far as hosting camps for their fans - yes, literal camps. That’s not to say it’s all positive; they undoubtedly lost a fair share after that Daily Beast story and others have been vocal about their problems with the sisters in the years since. But their continued success is clear evidence that the fandom is incredibly loyal.

What’s important to remember when thinking about how the Oshrys’ digital strategy can relate to yours is that they started in the same place most of us do: with no audience. Here are some takeaways from their journey that are worth considering when starting your own:

  • It’s okay to f*ck up: Claudia and Jackie are not shy about the difficulties that come with production, especially in the early days. When celebrating the 1,000th episode of The Toast, Jackie said, “So much of the beginning of this show was us embarrassing ourselves for the greater good.” Like so many of us in the digital strategy industry say, it’s important to just start. You’ll get better along the way and as long as you take it in stride, it will endear you to your audience.

  • Relatability is the name of the game: On that note, at the end of the day, it’s about being relatable. “We are constantly putting ourselves out there and being embarrassing and I think that’s why people relate to us,” Claudia said on the 1,000th episode. It’s been part of her brand – and therefore, her family’s – from the early days, when memes about work and dating built much of the following that is still with her today.

  • There’s a never-ending stream of inside jokes: Before there was the popular #IYKYK hashtag, there were the Oshrys, who seem to have an entire language that their audience is fluent in. New Toasters will really have to pay attention, and probably do some additional research, to understand words like “steens” and know Jackie’s latest nickname for Claudia. It makes the audience feel like a part of the extended family, and gives them a more vested interest in the success of the brand.

  • Premium content is extra $$$: Between the podcasts, YouTube and social media, the Oshrys offer plenty of free content, but they pump out even more on Patreon, a membership platform that allows creators to get paid for content. Monetization via a paywall is not for everyone, particularly if you’re just starting out, but their model is working: a Facebook group that is only for Patreon supporters has almost 20K members.

  • They know their audience because they are their audience: “Good morning, millennials” has been Claudia and Jackie’s opening show line for years. They’re incredibly tapped into millennial pop culture and the comments show that their audience is looking for them to weigh in on any given day’s hot topics. Not to mention they have grown with their audience, and share the big life moments (i.e. marriage, babies) along the way. To many, their feeds feel like those of our friends, rather than influencers.

TLDR: The Oshrys are like the Kardashians of the Internet. If you know them, you’ve got opinions, but also have to admit that they know exactly what they’re doing. They were early to social, memes, and even streaming, and their honesty along the way (good and bad) has brought them a loyal group of fans that most influencers would pay a lot of money for. It’s worth getting to know how they do it. 

Need To KnowMelissa BlumComment