Tough-minded

He's a tough-minded owner.

[T]his was the Society of Jesus, founded in Spain five hundred years before by a tough-minded soldier who trained men to hold a breach or a salon, preach a sermon or write a treaty, and do it and not argue …

Britain's Peregrine Worsthorne, 36, is a tough-minded Tory journalist with scant regard for preconceived opinions—his own or anybody else's.

They considered themselves tough-minded realists, and regarded doubters as fuzzy-minded whiners.