Seamon originally comes from a small town in Indiana, but found herself in New York in the summer of 2013 working as an unpaid intern alongside her cousin, Kelly McFarland. On a whim, they bought the domain mimosasmanhattan.com and created a matching Instagram account to document all the various brunch places they went to that summer.
"Blogging was a thing. Instagram was just starting to make a splash," Seamon told me. "We were also 20 years old. We had to find places that didn't ID."
The Mimosas & Manhattan venture was short-lived at the beginning, as both had to return to their colleges. But after Seamon graduated in 2015 and moved back to New York for work, they started to gain traction. Seamon still remembers how they made their first dollar in January 2016, with a following of 15,000: a lip gloss campaign that netted them $150 in exchange for one blog post and two Instagram photos.
It wasn't until September 2018 that Seamon figured out she could afford quit her job at Macy's and become an influencer full-time. That same year, McFarland got offered a job to move out to Los Angeles, and the duo rebranded their Instagram account to CourtandKelly to reflect their bi-coastal presence.
"We started at 0 followers. We weren't reality stars," Seamon said. "We've had to work our a---- off to get to this position ... You have to have those humble beginnings."