The call from my grower came at 11:15 a.m. It was so unexpected, given the weather forecast I had seen the night before, that I was surprised to hear her voice.

“Paul,” she began with unmistakable gloom.

“Oh, no, you gotta be kidding!” I responded.

Virtually every shoot, with tiny flower clusters exposed, was killed May 14 at the prized Pinot Noir vineyard south of Cumberland I depend on for my best wines  after temperatures fell to 31 degrees for about two hours May 14.

Some damage, perhaps 15 percent of the crop, also occurred at my estate vineyard in Garrett County and at many others around Maryland and the region, though few if any suffered the complete wipeout that befell my friends, grapevine pugilists Barbara and Mike Hutton.

After establishing the vineyard in 2009, here is the record for the first four seasons of grape production at Bear Hill: 2010, 90 percent wipeout due to the latest frost anyone had ever seen (May 15); 2011, total loss due to Memorial Day hail storm; 2012, blessed full harvest; and now this in 2013.

The Huttons, accomplished professionals and now energetic retirees, insist they will persevere. But who could blame them if they decided they gave it their best shot and wanted their springs, summers and falls back for a few years? (I am not exaggerating.)

Space does not permit my detailing of how such weather vagaries are unprecedented, but I will note that 31 degrees alone should not be a killer. It was the extremely high relative humidity, when the thermometer dipped below freezing, that formed the massive white blanket.

“It looked like a 1-inch snow,” Barbara said.

No meteorology training is needed to know the atmosphere is hotter in recent years — it’s recorded fact, here and worldwide — but it also seems more saturated much of the time. All the moisture from those melting ice-caps melting? Doesn’t it have to go somewhere?

All of Bear Hill’s fruit goes to me. So, Deep Creek Cellars will again turn elsewhere for its vintage, as the drama around our planet’s live experiment in human adaptation continues.

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“Why can’t I motivate the Indian workforce?” This is one of my 10 most common questions from small businesses doing business in India.

It often comes from well-meaning professionals who try to apply U.S. management styles in India without really understanding the differences in U.S. and Indian cultures. It’s a frustrating problem but a common pitfall that is easily avoidable. I’m sympathetic to frustrating, common and easily avoidable problems — especially since I once called my computer tech support to troubleshoot a computer issue only to realize several minutes into the call that my keyboard wasn’t plugged in.

A U.S. manager called me the other day annoyed about the declining participation by her young Indian staff during lunchtime meetings. She was in India on an extended trip during which she wanted to maximize her time and bond with the team. She thought she was being generous providing free sandwiches as an added incentive for the young employees to participate. What she didn’t realize there was a dietary disconnect: Most of the employees ate hot, fresh lunches comprised of several of different dishes. The cold sandwiches were a turnoff, not an incentive.

The manager had read up on the Indian culture before she left for her extended visit but had not fully realized the impact of cross-cultural nuances. It’s a common problem when doing business abroad. Cross-cultural disconnects are often to blame when people complain they only get 6o percent efficiency from their Indian staff (compared to their U.S. staff), or how Indians don’t take initiative or about why they have a high employee turnover rate.

In my experience, most people understand that different cultures think and act differently. But under the stress of a fast-paced business environment, people expect everyone to act the same as themselves. The U.S. manager is a bright woman but once she got annoyed, her ability to identify the problem became clouded. As far as she was concerned, since it worked well in the U.S. it should work well in India.

Her reaction wasn’t unlike my attitude when my computer stopped working. The computer worked fine the day before, so obviously the problem had to be more than an accidental plug disconnect. I know that checking the plugs is a basic step when investigating a computer problem but I went into high stress mode and my judgment became clouded. I immediately called tech support assuming the problem was within the computer.

I learned my lesson, but it still hasn’t stopped me from laughing when my IT friends tell entertaining stories of people complaining about computer problems. Especially when the problem was the computer wasn’t plugged-in.

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About a year ago, we developed a new tagline for our law firm: “Redefining what a law firm should be.” The tagline was meant to capture our refusal to do what constitutes business as usual in most law firms. In my mind, the line encapsulated something that could resonate with our target market and serve inside our walls as both a reminder of what we set out to do and a challenge to do it.

Shortly after we adopted “Redefining what a law firm should be,” my Vistage group brought in a branding expert who offered an on-the-spot assessment of each company’s branding. I was very pleased with ours — in love with it, actually — and presented our tagline with very real enthusiasm (even if muted for public consumption).

The expert was unimpressed. So was I — with him.

What I didn’t know then was that I had just run up against the phenomenon that I have come to think about as “the tappers and the listeners,” something I learned about in the phenomenal book “Made to Stick,” by Chiph and Dan Heath.

In 1990, write the Heath brothers, a Stanford psychology doctoral candidate named Elizabeth Newton conducted a simple experiment – one which you’ve probably reproduced unknowingly at your kitchen table at one time or another. She gathered students, divided them into two groups and assigned each group to be either tappers or listeners.

The tappers received a list of well-known songs, such as “the Star-Spangled Banner” or “Happy Birthday to You.” After pairing off with a listener, each tapper was asked to pick a song and tap out the rhythm by tapping on a table. The listener was asked to guess the song.

In Newton’s experiment, 120 songs were tapped out. Now, you may think that the point of the experiment was to determine, possibly even to shock you by revealing, how often the listeners guessed right. But that’s not the point at all. (Take a moment to guess a percentage before continuing.)

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Even as high unemployment continues to grab headlines, shortages of people in key job categories and turnover are increasingly affecting Baltimore-area business owners. A combination of factors is going to cause this trend to accelerate over the next few months.

First, employees no longer rank job security as their top issue. For the first time in five years, this concern has been replaced by “opportunities to use skills and abilities” as the primary indicator of job satisfaction. Add on top of this the high levels of dissatisfaction reported by employees with their employers and you have a mix that suggests employees will be looking around for new opportunities in numbers we haven’t seen in years. Some surveys indicate the percentage of employees wanting to leave their current jobs is as high as 86 percent. Less fear of quitting combined with pent-up demand means more turnover and labor market churn.

A second factor hitting us this spring is hiring rates for college graduates are increasing the most they have in seven years, with the average hiring rate for a graduate with a bachelor’s degree graduate up 5.3 percent over last year. High-demand skill areas are commanding increases over 9 percent. And this isn’t just high tech and engineering jobs: Starting salaries for business grads are up 7.1 percent and administrative assistants are commanding salaries 4.1 percent higher than 2012.

This is good news if you’ve got a son or daughter coming out of college this spring but a challenge to manage in terms of your company’s compensation plans. Compensation professionals call this “compression” when people entering the labor force are commanding higher pay than those already in the workplace, which compresses the compensation of current employees all the way up the salary scale. This is especially challenging now since salary increases have averaged 3 percent or less for years.

Finally, it doesn’t matter to the business owner if the national unemployment rate is 7.5 percent and unemployment in Maryland is 6.6 percent if the job he or she is seeking to fill is experiencing unemployment rates of 1.5-to-2 percent, as is the case with many IT positions. Surveys of HR professionals indicate hiring difficulty is at the highest level it has been in five years.

In the face of this trend, what’s the best recruitment strategy? Keep the employees you’ve got. A general rule of thumb is that it cost ten times more to recruit, hire, orient and train a new employee and get him or her up to speed than it does to retain a current employee. While competitive compensation is important, retention is more about your employees feeling that they are able to make a contribution utilizing their skills, are given opportunities to learn new ones and are appreciated for their efforts.

Along with a retention strategy, be proactive about hiring. Do workforce planning as part of strategic planning and put recruitment plans in place for key talent before you need them.

It’s a really good time to look around your business and ask how confident you are about retaining your key employees and how confident you are about finding the talent you’ll need this year. Because it’s going to get tougher on both fronts.

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When business leaders talk to prospects, clients and employees about their companies, they often focus on the least compelling elements without even realizing it.

It’s second nature to describe our businesses in terms of “what” we do and “how” we do it. The problem is there is no magic in “what” and “how.” They do not capture the motivations of our people, the deep-down reasons we started our companies and continue to pour into them our hearts, minds, and souls, the core beliefs that drive us every day.

Those reasons are “why” and that’s what makes people listen to what we have to say.

Simon Sinek, the author of “Start With Why,” has a great concept called the Golden Circle. The outermost ring is “what,” the middle ring is “how” and “why” is at the center. After studying the communication styles of great motivators — think Apple and Martin Luther King Jr. — Sinek learned something: The most inspiring people communicate differently than the rest of us.

Most of us cling to the Golden Circle’s outer ring; we explain “what.” Some of us communicate “how.” But very few of us communicate from the center, conveying “why.” Consider the drive to innovate, to change the way we interact with technology that inspired Steve Jobs. Those who convey their “why” effectively have the power to inspire.

I believe these three elements are interrelated: “Why” drives “what” and “how.” I envision the Golden Circle as a set of interlocking gears, each working off the other.

When people and organizations communicate “why,” that creates the kind of emotion that inspires action and influences behavior. It’s easy to shrug off “what” or “how.” That’s everyday stuff, nothing special. It’s much harder to ignore a unique, honest and powerful “why.”

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Spring is the time when all things are new again. Many of us go through the routine of cleaning our homes or offices. We sort through old items, pack up and store winter clothes and make a pile of items to donate. So why not do some spring cleaning on your business and your brand?

When was the last time you posted a blog? Have you shared an article or commented on someone else’s post on a social media outlet such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter recently? Maybe now is the time to expand your social media presence.

Sites such as Pinterest and Instagram have become hugely popular over the last year and their visual nature makes them very different, and sometimes more impactful, than LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. Consider if they are appropriate for you or your business.

Don’t wait until you need your resume for something immediate to bring it up to date. Think about what accomplishments you’ve had recently and add them to it. Have you changed jobs or received a promotion? Add your new job title and description as well. If nothing has changed, give it a good proof read to see if there are overlooked mistakes.

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Pruning is over in my 1,000-vine vineyard and, after what almost happened on May Day, the personal highlight is still having my left thumb.

I started at 7 a.m. and it was late afternoon as I snipped with the right hand and tore last year’s canes off the trellis wire with the left when my thumb ended up inside the jaws of the razor-sharp pruning shears. I will never forget that feeling of steel on bone.

Instantly, I dropped the tool, grabbed my left hand, and began loping down the hill for the house. I won’t keep you hanging: I escaped with a half-inch-long gash at the base of the thumb! The hardness of the bone had stopped the shears from fully closing, so that little damage was done.

Now, I remark about this so as to note that in all my time pruning grapevines, I have never suffered a serious cut. Yet I think all the time how the odds are piling up against me: 1,000 vines, 50-to-60 cuts per vine, 21 years.

No, I don’t wanna do the math.

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Last week, Bill Gates was visiting South Korea where he met with Korean President Park Geun-hye. When they met, Gates shook her hand while his left hand stayed in his pocket. In Korea, the hand-in-pocket handshake is considered extremely rude and offensive. Call it an error in etiquette, politeness or decorum: the worldwide media picked up the gaffe and major news outlets in the U.S. highlighted the story.

Coming from the very informal technology sector, perhaps Gates didn’t think anything of the hand-in-pocket. But after the media highlighted the incident, Park’s office felt compelled to comment on the handshake with an official statement downplaying the gesture as being an “American style of greeting.” (Thank goodness for American culture that Gates didn’t commit a faux pas of accidentally sneezing on the president or unwittingly pick at his nose.)

Gates presumably spent a lot of time and energy in organizing the trip. He was apparently promoting a new startup. But the incident, while having caused offense to the Korean people, also created a feeling among them that he had something to hide, symbolized by the hidden hand. His intended message was overshadowed by what is probably an innocent or nervous habit. It is a classic example of why it’s important to learn and be sensitive to foreign culture and etiquette when doing business abroad.

Have you been subject to or committed a cultural faux pas when doing business in a foreign country? I would love to hear your experience!

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After seven years in business, I truly thought we had the tax thing down and all the regulations that go along with owning a business.

We all know about the federal and state taxes we pay every year, and then there are all the other taxes that come along with owning a retail business, such as the trader’s license ($40 a year to operate a store), personal property tax just to hold on to your business name in Maryland ($300) and also the personal property tax you pay every year on the things you purchase for your business (cost varies). Isn’t it great? Buy something to help your business and pay tax on it year after year.

What happened to us recently, however, was a new one.

You might remember a blog sometime back where we talk about no matter how well you plan, the stuff hits the fan when you leave town for a little vacation time. So, it was just that type of trip. We flew out of town for three days – just three days.

Day Two, I get a call from my office manager that the Maryland Department of Agriculture is at Vircity. Maryland Department of what? Why in the world are they at Vircity?

Having just heard from a fellow business owner of a BGE scam, I was on the alert for scams. These men wanted to put weights on our scale to see if it weighed properly. They didn’t call, didn’t set an appointment with me, and who’s to say these weights they are putting on my scale actually weigh what they say they should? Sounded like a scam to me, being 2,000 miles away.

My staff didn’t know what to do so they let the men use their weights. The men claimed the scale was off and that they could take the scale but since it was off in the customer’s favor, not ours, they would leave it, but we had to get it fixed.

Well, it just so happens that there is a division of the Maryland Department of Agriculture that is in charge of weights and measures. I looked but did not find anything that talked about weighing packages.

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I’m a hypocrite.

You might think that writing those three words is a release, akin to the admission that formally begins introductions at AA meetings. But it’s not. The phrase is simply the password to a dark, cavernous passage of second-guessing and parental angst.

Yet, there it is: I’m a hypocrite.

My oldest son is in eighth grade. He’s a great kid. Funny, good looking (takes after his mother, thank God), a compassionate soul and a lively spirit. He’s an average student. He has no time management skills, does many assignments at the last minute, and has me seriously worrying about how we’re going to get our basement in shape for him to move in when he’s 30. In other words, he’s me when I was his age, only (truth be told) better in most every respect.

Yet here I sit, in my comfortable chair, telling him he has to improve. I’m not yelling; I don’t yell. I am, however, insistent that we collaborate on devising a time management system that works for him. I point out the benefits of the calendaring system I’ve championed for so long. My wife and I relate our “aha!” moments when we finally understood how to make this organizational thing work.

To his credit, he does not roll his eyes. He’s better than that. He listens and even takes some of it in. He resolves to work with us, to do better. Hugs and goodnight.

But here’s the thing I can’t escape, as I sit now alone in my comfortable chair: I didn’t dare tell him that I was like him. I could not break away from the fear that my disclosure would cause him to lose resolve. I didn’t want him to think to himself: “What worked for Dad will work for me.”

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