Today we’d like to introduce you to Mélanie Dumais.
Hi Mélanie, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My story has never been a straight line and I think that’s what makes it mine.
I’m a French-Canadian entrepreneur from Quebec, actress, content creator and independent Travel Ambassador based near Montreal. For many years, entrepreneurship has been part of my life. I spent eight years as a fitness franchise owner, and my background in coaching, nutrition and wellness taught me how much I love helping people grow, challenge themselves and create change in their lives.
But my own life has also required me to reinvent myself more than once.
Over the years, I went through personal and professional transitions that made me question what success really meant to me. I realized that I didn’t simply want to build a career. I wanted to build a life that gave me more freedom, creativity, meaningful experiences and time for the people I love.
That realization brought me back to parts of myself I had sometimes put aside: acting, performing, dancing, creating and traveling. Today, instead of trying to fit myself into one box, I’ve learned to embrace all of those sides of who I am.
Travel eventually became an important part of that journey. I discovered a business model that allowed me to combine my entrepreneurial background with my passion for travel and helping others experience more of the world. Today, as a travel ambassador, I help people discover ways to travel differently, while I also mentor others who are interested in building more flexibility and freedom into their own lives.
At the same time, I continue pursuing my artistic career as an actress and performer and developing my personal brand, AbondanceMD | Voyage & Liberté. For me, abundance isn’t simply about money. It’s about having choices, being able to create, travel, love, contribute, experience new things and continue becoming the person you want to be.
At 44, I feel like I’m entering one of the most exciting chapters of my life. I’m a mother of three, an entrepreneur and an artist, and I’m still dreaming bigger, trying new things and building projects that scare me a little, in the best possible way.
If there is one thing my journey has taught me, it’s that we don’t have to choose just one version of ourselves. We can evolve. We can start again. And sometimes, the life that feels most like us begins when we finally give ourselves permission to create it.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road.
One of the biggest challenges in my life has been learning how to rebuild myself when the life I thought I was creating suddenly changed. I’ve experienced difficult personal transitions, including the end of an important relationship and periods where I had to rediscover who I was outside of the roles I had been fulfilling for everyone else.
I also experienced the loss of my sister in 2019, which profoundly changed my perspective on life. Losing someone you love has a way of reminding you that time is not guaranteed. It made me question how I wanted to spend mine and what I wanted my life to stand for.
Professionally, entrepreneurship has brought its own challenges. I spent eight years running a fitness franchise, and while that experience taught me so much about business, leadership and perseverance, I eventually realized that success on paper doesn’t necessarily mean you are living a life that still feels aligned with who you are becoming.
Starting new chapters has meant facing uncertainty, financial pressure at times, other people’s opinions, and my own fears. Pursuing acting, building a business in the travel industry, creating content and developing new projects in my forties requires me to continually step outside my comfort zone.
I’ve also had to learn that reinvention doesn’t mean everything before it was a mistake. Every chapter gave me something I needed for the next one.
Today, I see challenges differently. They don’t necessarily mean I’m on the wrong path. Sometimes they are an invitation to grow, adjust and become more honest about what I truly want.
I think one of my greatest strengths has become my willingness to begin again. Not from zero, but from experience.
As you know, we’re big fans of Abondancemd | Voyage & Liberté. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
AbondanceMD | Voyage & Liberté is the personal brand I created around a simple idea: helping people create more freedom, experiences and possibilities in their lives.
A major part of my work today is in the travel industry. As an independent Travel Ambassador, I help people discover a different way to travel by giving them access to a membership-based travel platform designed to help members save on accommodations, experiences and vacations. I also mentor people who want to build their own independent travel-related business by sharing this way of traveling with others, while creating the possibility of an additional source of income.
What sets my approach apart is that I don’t see travel simply as a transaction or a vacation. For me, travel is about experiences, connection and freedom. I love showing people what can become possible when they rethink the way they travel; whether that means taking a trip they thought was financially out of reach, traveling more often, or turning their passion for travel into an entrepreneurial opportunity.
My brand also reflects the fact that I have never wanted to fit into only one professional identity. I am an entrepreneur, but I am also an actress, performer and content creator. Creativity is an important part of everything I build. Through social media and storytelling, I share real experiences, travel discoveries and the lessons I’m learning while creating this next chapter of my life.
I’m also developing another project that is very close to my heart: transformational retreats that will bring together travel, personal growth and meaningful human connection. My vision is to create experiences where people don’t simply visit a destination; they come home having discovered something new about themselves.
What I’m most proud of is not a particular product or achievement. It’s the community and vision I’m building around the idea of abundance. To me, abundance means having choices: the freedom to experience more, create more, connect more deeply and design a life that feels aligned with who you truly are.
Ultimately, I want people who discover AbondanceMD | Voyage & Liberté to understand that I’m not simply helping people travel for less. I want to inspire them to live more.
How do you think about happiness?
What makes me happiest is feeling fully alive.
Happiness, for me, is found in experiences and connection. It’s traveling somewhere new and discovering a different culture. It’s dancing and completely losing myself in the music. It’s acting and having the opportunity to step into another character and tell a story. It’s creating something that didn’t exist before and watching an idea come to life.
But some of my greatest happiness comes from much simpler moments; spending time with my three children, sharing experiences with the people I love, laughing until my stomach hurts, having meaningful conversations, or simply being present enough to realize, “This is a moment I’m going to remember.”
Freedom also makes me deeply happy. Not just the freedom to travel, but the freedom to choose how I spend my time, who I surround myself with, what I create and what direction I want my life to take.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that happiness isn’t something I want to postpone until I reach the next goal. I want to experience it along the way.
For me, a rich life isn’t measured only by what you have. It’s measured by how deeply you get to live it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/BEST_TRAVEL_CLUB
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abondancemd
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AbondanceMD
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Abondancemd
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@abondancemd
Image Credits
Lorraine Thot
Denis Ducharme
Larkscorp
Creation Style Montreal
