Coach Shawn Oliver Leadership

It was the bottom of the 7th in Chickamauga, Georgia. My third year as a head coach, and those jokers had finally figured out how to play as a team, growing from missing the playoffs in year one to standing one out away from our first region championship.

We were up 6-3, but the ghost of my own aggressive coaching call from the top of the 6th, where I sent the runner on a shallow fly ball to left for the third out, was still looming.

The bottom of the 7th started ugly: a hit-by-pitch, followed by a walk, led to a quick pitching change. The new guy we brought in quickly induced a massive double play. Two outs. The boys were already getting the water cooler ready by the end of the dugout.

The next hitter was their best guy, already 3-3 on the day with 2 loud doubles. I decided to intentionally walk him because we had struck out the on-deck hitter three times on 11 total pitches. Baseball guys reading this are already groaning because I just put the tying run at the plate. But after two quick strikes, all the tension was gone. I was right, we just needed one more strike, and I was the smartest guy in the room.

Then I watched the pitch leave the right-handed slot of my pitcher, saw it hang, and heard the sickening, loud crack of the barrel.

As the ball sailed into the humid Georgia night to tie the game, I knew I had just cost our team a championship. We secured the third out on the next hitter, but the damage was done. We played into the 9th inning, where a non-controllable took over: the bases got loaded, and not a single pitch that wasn’t swung at was called a strike. I was livid at the home plate umpire in the moment, but it wasn’t the Blue’s fault we were in that spot. It was flat-out mine.

That game still sticks with me to this day. It is a tax I am trying to eliminate every time I take the field, and it’s the exact moment that flashes in my mind whenever I feel myself allowing the scoreboard to take over again.

I’ve come to call what’s happening in moments like that the Red Dirt Tax.

It’s the hidden cost every transactional leader pays for chasing the scoreboard. The debt your soul racks up every time you measure your worth by your last result.

If you’ve ever felt your stomach grip after a loss, or slept poorly through a losing streak, or come home and snapped at the people you love because of something that happened at work, you’ve been paying the Red Dirt Tax. You may not have known what to call it. But you’ve felt it.

Here’s the hard part: most of us don’t realize we’re paying it. The tax is silent. It comes out automatically — energy, presence, patience, marriage, faith — and we don’t notice the withdrawal until the account is empty.

So, before we talk about how to stop paying it, you need to be able to see it. Three signs you owe the Red Dirt Tax right now:

Sign 1: You can’t turn the game off

The game ends, and you can’t actually leave it. You replay possessions on the drive home. You’re physically at the dinner table but mentally in the third inning. Your kids know not to ask about the day.

This is the first symptom and the one most leaders dismiss as “caring.” It’s not caring. Caring takes a break and comes back tomorrow. The Red Dirt Tax doesn’t take a break.

Sign 2: You need the win to feel okay

Notice your internal weather after a win versus after a loss. If a win makes you feel valuable and a loss makes you feel worthless, your worth isn’t anchored — it’s leased, and the scoreboard is the landlord.

The leaders who burn out aren’t the ones who lose. They’re the ones whose self-image depends on never losing.

Sign 3: You’re harder on the people who love you than on the people who pay you

Your assistants, your players, your boss — they see your composure. Your spouse and your kids see the bill.

The Red Dirt Tax always gets paid by someone. If you can’t bring it back to the people who hired you, you bring it home to the people who chose you. That’s the cruelest math in leadership.

What this is, and what it isn’t

The Red Dirt Tax isn’t about caring less. It isn’t about lowered expectations or softer accountability. The opposite — the leaders I work with have the highest standards in the room.

It’s about where your worth lives.

If your worth is on the scoreboard, every loss is a referendum on whether you’re enough. You’ll work harder, sleep less, snap quicker, and slowly trade everything that actually matters for one more win that won’t fix you.

If your worth is secured — anchored in something the scoreboard can’t touch — you can hold the line on the standard, run through the storm, and still come home at peace.

That second life is available. I wrote a whole book on how to get there. But it starts with seeing the tax for what it is.

Next steps

This week, pick one:

1. Notice the moment. The next time you feel the grip — the stomach, the spiral, the snap at home — pause for 10 seconds and name it. “That’s the Red Dirt Tax.” You can’t stop paying a bill you can’t see.
2. Tell one person. Someone who’d love you whether you won or lost yesterday. Tell them what the scoreboard has been doing to you. Hearing yourself say it out loud changes things.
3. Read the book. Red Letters and Red Dirt is the full blueprint for eliminating the tax. Coaches, leaders, fathers — it’s written for the seat you’re sitting in. Get the book →

The scoreboard will lie to you. Your worth isn’t on it.

— Coach O

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Shawn Oliver is a head coach, leadership writer, and author of Red Letters and Red Dirt. He helps coaches and leaders eliminate the Red Dirt Tax and build cultures anchored in secured worth.