The practical playbook for building the next generation of great companies is coming

Tough Enough is landing on bookshelves at the end of September

Matt Hunter • May 6, 2026

I just finished co-writing a new book, Tough Enough: How to Lead a Team to Greatness Without Being a Jerk, which Hachette will publish in September 2026. As an exited founder turned executive coach, I’ve partnered with John Baird, one of Silicon Valley’s most respected executive coaches (Apple, Nike, DoorDash, MasterClass), to pay forward our hard-earned experiences in this book.

We’ve all heard (or thought) it before: Empathy, compassion, and kindness in business leadership are great, but what about someone like Elon Musk? Or Steve Jobs? Or Anna Wintour?

Whether you like them or not, these are the founders, builders, and culture-defining tastemakers who have led industry-shaping brands and reinvented how their fields operate.

That leads us to the main uncomfortable question of the book:

Do you have to be a jerk to be successful?

The short answer is no; the long answer is what this book is all about.

We have noticed a pattern amongst these “great” leaders. They’re all incredibly tough.

Great companies are built by tough leaders.

So what exactly is toughness? Toughness, as we’ve come to define it, is the ability to commit to a mission, stay strong in the face of challenges, and push others toward excellence.

It’s a blend of inner capacities and trainable mindsets like boldness, conviction, and obsession—as well as relational skills, like being able to productively engage in conflict, purposely share difficult emotions, and enforce high standards.

And toughness is not bullying, humiliation, or personal attacks. If it raises fear while lowering standards or if it serves the leader’s ego over the mission, it’s fake toughness. It’s not the real thing.

There is a way to be tough while being a jerk, and there is a way to be tough while being respectful. In this book, we show you how to do the latter.

One of the central concepts in the book is the Toughness Spectrum, a continuum between extreme toughness, which prioritizes the mission above all else, and extreme comfort, which prioritizes how people feel. There are distinct zones along the Toughness Spectrum, which can be seen as different operating modes for leaders. Each of us has a natural baseline on the spectrum where we spend most of our time.

Generally speaking, performance rises as toughness rises. I’m not going to sugarcoat this: there is a zone, one tougher than Tough Enough, called the Hardcore Zone (where your Musk’s, Bezos’s and Jobs’s live) that does get the best business and financial results, but there is a huge cost to pursuing it, most people can’t, and the ones that do are often jerks.

If you want to lead a team to greatness without being a jerk, you have to aim for the Tough Enough Zone, where you push hard while maintaining human decency. You’re tough, but not ruthless. You demand excellence, move fast, and lead with integrity and respect.

In our research, we found there are seven areas of leadership where toughness really matters, and most leaders consistently get their calibration wrong in these areas. We’ve created seven habits that help dial in your toughness where it counts. You become tougher and more effective by understanding how each habit works and deliberately turning up the dial in the areas you need to.

Whether you’re trying to scale a multibillion-dollar company, win a championship, step up as a stronger leader, or push your team’s limits, Tough Enough provides the tools to make it happen on your own terms.

You can learn more about Tough Enough and start reading it right away here: https://www.matthunter.co/toughenough

With this newsletter announcement, John and I are starting to partner with founders, CEO’s, and companies who are aligned with our mission to create more Tough Enough leaders and teams. They’re unapologetic about ensuring strong execution, yet they also bring some measure of compassion into the places that shape our future. They champion the mission, elevate the people behind it, and deliver for stakeholders. The more we help leaders and teams develop into this zone, the stronger and more sustainable our institutions will become. If you’re open to collaborating on custom speaking and workshop engagements, book clubs, and coaching opportunities around Tough Enough, reach out so we can work together this year.

Thank you for your support in developing Tough Enough leaders to guide teams and their companies to greatness.