Justine Murphy, founder of mymuybueno, shares what it takes to create a lasting, credible recruitment agency in yachting.
The latest trend in yachting isn’t a new yacht design or a new destination. It is the sudden explosion of people who believe they can become crew agents overnight.
Over the last few years, I have watched a stream of former crew step off yachts, make one placement, taste a bit of commission, and decide they are ready to open an agency. A logo, an email address, a quick and basic website, an Instagram profile, and suddenly they are posting jobs online and presenting themselves as recruitment professionals.
From the outside, it looks simple. Introduce someone, invoice, get paid. But those of us who have built real agencies know that proper crew placement is not a side project. It is structure, precision, responsibility, safeguarding, judgment, and a level of due diligence that cannot be improvised or reverse-engineered.
To be clear, this is not about discouraging anyone from starting a recruitment business. The yachting industry benefits from new agencies when they are built with integrity, proper systems, and a clear understanding of what this role actually entails. There are a very small number of new agencies who have entered the market and done this exceptionally well. They take it seriously. They build properly. They operate at a professional standard.
What I am addressing here is everything outside of that — the shortcuts, the surface-level set-ups, the fast-track attempts to create the appearance of legitimacy without any of the operational backbone or industry understanding behind it. The ones who launch loudly, but without the infrastructure needed to protect crew, clients, vessels, or themselves.
One placement does not make anyone an expert. It does not teach you how to manage complex personalities. It does not prepare you for the difficult conversations. It does not give you the instinct or judgment that comes only from working with thousands of crew and clients over many years. And it certainly does not give you the systems required to run a compliant recruitment business.
The deeper concern, and the one that genuinely matters, is the lack of due diligence. Proper reference checks, certificate verification, full documentation review, GDPR compliance, secure storage of personal data, protected databases, and clear accountability — these are not optional extras. They are the foundation of a legitimate operation.
Yet so many of these pop-up agencies skip all of this. Crew are sending passports, personal details, certificates, and private information to individuals storing them in standard inboxes and unprotected folders. No compliance. No safeguarding. It is not only unprofessional; it is unsafe.
Yachting relies on standards. Crew deserve to be protected. Clients deserve discretion and reliability. The industry depends on agencies who understand the responsibility they carry.
We recently celebrated mymuybueno turning fourteen years old, and with that comes fourteen years of building the systems, the infrastructure, the compliance and the reputation that sit behind the scenes but make all the difference. This year also marks my twentieth year in the superyacht industry, and those two decades have given me the understanding and the insight that only time, consistency, and real-world experience can provide.
And I am far from alone. There are several long-standing agencies who have operated just as long or longer, and they set the benchmark for what professional recruitment in this sector looks like. They are trusted. They understand the responsibility.
Most of the new wave rises fast and fades even faster. The excitement wears off. The gaps in knowledge become impossible to hide. The pressure of doing this job properly becomes too much. And more often than not, they disappear quietly, leaving crew unsure of what happened or where their information ended up.
But those who build correctly, who take the responsibility seriously, and who operate with integrity, always last.
I will always support ambition and new businesses. There is room for growth in this industry and room for innovation. But if someone wants to call themselves a crew agent, they must honor what that actually means. Learn the job. Build the systems. Protect the data. Respect the process. Earn the trust. Earn the reputation.
This is not gatekeeping. It is safeguarding the standards that protect everyone, because the industry deserves that. Crew deserve that. Yachts deserve that.
Real authority comes from consistency, not noise. The agencies operating with real standards set the pace for everyone else.