YEREVAN–KALAVAN, Gegharkunik region, Armenia — American writer Gregory V. Diehl (born 1988) calls himself a game-changer, caretaker, figure-outer, lecturer, listener, salesman and stalker. He was raised in California and left home as a teenager to travel extensively. By the age of 30, he had lived and worked in more than 50 countries. Based in Kalavan since 2019, Diehl draws from years of global cultural experience to lead the Kalavan Retreat Center — an educational NGO devoted to personal growth, critical thought and pursuit of intellectual freedom. The center has become an international hub for those seeking alternatives to traditional learning and societal conformity. Gregory is the author of the following books: Travel as Transformation (2016), Brand Identity Breakthrough (2016), The Influential Author (2018), The Heroic and Exceptional Minority (2021), Everyone Is an Entrepreneur (2022), Our Global Lingua Franca (2023), The Romantic Ideal—The Highest Standard of Romance for a Man (2024).
I wanted to interview Gregory after reading the Armenian translation of his book, Everyone Is an Entrepreneur (translated by Tatev Sahakyan).
Gregory, your book can be considered an example of educational-motivational literature. But we know that the authors of such books have often not achieved in real life the successes they write about. Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich: This Book Can Make You a Millionaire, was not a millionaire. Dale Carnegie, who wrote How to Win Friends, didn’t have friends. Paul Bragg, the advocate of healthy eating who wrote The Miracle of Fasting, died at 81 — an age many who don’t eat healthily have surpassed. And Leonard Orr, author of Stop Dying, passed away six years ago. So, are you a successful entrepreneur?
The answer to that question depends on what you mean by the words “successful” and “entrepreneur.” In my book, I talk about entrepreneurship as a universal way of seeing how people apply their knowledge, skills, tools, and other resources to pursue the things they value. And they get better and better at this as they learn more, technology advances, and the economy evolves in such a way that they have more freedom and opportunities to do this without restrictions or interference. We in the West are the beneficiaries of growing up in a culture that supports and encourages this way of thinking and acting, as opposed to here in the post-Soviet world that is largely still recovering from the communist paradigm. So to answer your question: Yes, I successfully use the economic principles of entrepreneurship to pursue what I value to a high degree of effectiveness, which includes but is not limited to making money. It’s what I am trying to help bright and ambitious Armenians do too.
In your book you present the stereotypes and fears that residents of post-Soviet Armenia have toward entrepreneurship. Among other things, there is the mindset that one is supposedly born an entrepreneur, that it has to be in a person’s blood. Through your book, you try to convince us that not only can everyone be an entrepreneur, but that everyone is an entrepreneur, and that entrepreneurship is not a calling but a worldview.
The only thing preventing Armenians from being as entrepreneurial as Americans and other Westerners is their restrictive, shame-based culture that makes it very difficult for them to think independently and try implementing new, original solutions to common problems. It feels like I’ve gone back in time to the 1950s here. The nature of entrepreneurship is to experiment with superior ways to get things done. Monetary profit is the reward for that. Under these repressive cultural conditions, you have to be exceptionally self-confident and outgoing to stand in opposition to the “go with the flow” mentality of 99 percent of Armenians who socially penalize individuality.