Today we’d like to introduce you to Janai & Barry Garland
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
We both were born and raised in St. Louis, MO, we have two beautiful daughters together, Londyn and Loyal, and the sweetest little cockapoo, Mr. Business. We moved to Orlando on February 9. 2016. We have been married for 14 years and together for 15 years. Back in 2009 when we were courting, we used to celebrate our monthly anniversary by going on a special date on the 14th of every month. A year later, we got married on August 14. 2010 and until this day, we still go on dates [not necessarily on the 14th of every month] very often. Throughout the years, family and friends would often ask us for restaurant, movie and hotel recommendations, fun things to do and places to travel to.
After getting closer to God, He led us to create our namesake brand : JaNai & Barry G. It was created to glorify God through our marriage and everything that we do. God ordained us to be married, He has been with us throughout our entire union and He is still with us today. Having a Christ-centered marriage, household and lifestyle is very important to us. Our relationship with God comes first, even before our relationship with each other and we both understand and respect that about each other. The brand was created in 2023, and we are working to grow the brand, continue to grow closer to Christ & each other and inspire people to get to know Jesus.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Something that we’ve struggled with along the way is creating a work/life balance. Ultimately, most of the content that we film is….well, work. Albeit work that we thoroughly enjoy doing, it’s still a lot of work to film and edit videos, especially for YouTube. When you’ve worked so hard on filming a video, you want to work equally as hard to edit and post it. We would work, countless hours on a project, even if that was cutting into our “life” time.
We’ve learned that there has to be a time to be in front of the camera, and a time to be away from the camera. Especially when spending time with God, each other, our children and family. There has to be a healthy balance and boundary put in place of knowing when to power off the camera, shut down the computer and give whomever or whatever your undivided attention.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
We both are content creators in our own right, each with separate brands and skills, as well as one together. As explained earlier, we have the JaNai and Barry G. brand together. We believe in making God apart of everything that we do and we try our best show that within our content. We create content of us spending time together, restaurant, food and snack reviews, vlogs, hanging out with our kids and dog and anything else God leads us to create.
God gave us the idea of taking something special that we share with each other and share it with the world, thus we birthed JaNai and Barry G. Life can get really busy, especially being parents, and very family oriented. However, we believe that it’s pertinent to spend quality time with each other and we have always prioritized that no matter how busy our schedules get. It’s our way of saying : “I have a laundry list of things to do, but you mean so much to me that I am going to make time for you.” Sometimes that looks like us getting dressed up to go try a new restaurant, an all-time favorite or going to see the latest movie. Sometimes that looks like us staying home in our pajamas and watching a boxing match or Netflix together.
We want to show people that it’s important to spend time with your spouse as much as possible and have fun while doing so! Since our family and friends always ask for recommendations, we thought what better way to show them and others than to create content about something that we naturally and genuinely enjoy doing. Orlando is a big city and we are here to cover as much ground as possible and give our honest opinions and recommendations. In doing so, we hope to point as many people to Jesus as possible.
We are most proud of being used by God to create something for people to enjoy. What sets us apart from others is our unique approach to content creation. We are not a niche brand. Although we specialize in creating memorable date experiences, food review content, leisure activities and entertainment, that is not the only content we post. Our brand is about faith, food, family, fun and ALL things JaNai & Barry G. Which means, whatever we feel led to share to add value, we will do so. We don’t fit into one specific content category.
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
We love the diversity and opportunities. Living in Orlando has afforded us the opportunity to meet, network and build lasting friendships with people from all different walks of life and we are grateful for that. The things that we like least about Orlando are the tolls, traffic, and the fact that there’s little to no black history being taught and celebrated in our public schools.
Contact Info:
- Website: Own Your Piece Of The Pie | Own Your Piece Of The Pie
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/janaiandbarryg?igshid=MmIzYWVlNDQ5Yg==
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100090026032793&mibextid=LQQJ4d
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janai-and-barry-g-408941349
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5LBg0kES-OU2U1BHQsl_Jg
- Other: Own Your Piece Of The Pie | Own Your Piece Of The Pie
