Matt and Lisa Martinusen
It’s amazing what you can do with a few talented friends, Kickstarter and a leap of faith. That’s what Matt and Lisa Martinusen discovered in 2018 when they launched their hugely successful Catholic Card Game. The 20-somethings, members of St. Joseph in West St. Paul and parents to three young children, shared their story.
Q) You two met in college and first bonded over tattoos.
A) Lisa: I was sitting outside my classroom, sketching a tattoo I was going to get on my foot using a Sharpie, and Matt walked out.
Q) Now you’re married and you have five tattoos and Matt has four, all with Catholic imagery.
A) Matt: I have a crown of thorns on my arms and the 12 stars of Mary.
Lisa: I have a skull on my arm for Memento Mori with St. Philomena artwork in the skull. We get them to draw us closer to the Lord. They’re reminders. I would like a sleeve (a full arm of tattoos).
Matt: And I’m headed that way. We’re so young, if we get one a year…
Q) Do some Catholics judge them?
A) Matt: There’s a distinct line between older Catholics and younger Catholics, who embrace them. We’ve never received harsh judgment.
Lisa: I have as a woman from other women. It’s raised an eyebrow. But when you tell the story or it opens up a conversation, people can be quite interested.
Q) How did you come up with the idea for the Catholic Card Game?
A) Matt: I saw an advertisement for an IT version of “Cards Against Humanity.” It was very niche to IT folks, with jokes only they would understand, and that sparked my thinking. If that niche audience can do this, then we for sure could have our own version of the game. It was 4 a.m. — I couldn’t sleep. I wrote 20 ideas on my phone. Later that day Lisa laughed at some and started throwing out ideas. Once we had ideas for questions or answers for 100 cards we thought, “Oh, this actually could be a game.” We studied “Cards Against Humanity” and also used “Apples to Apples” for reference and saw that they had 400 cards, so we put in the effort to think up more ideas.
Lisa: Which was not hard.
Matt: Yeah, we just had to go to Mass a few more times.
Lisa: Many of the cards are drawn from real stories. “The sacristan who rules with an iron fist” — that was from my sister’s wedding. “Being in 10 weddings in one year” was something we experienced.
Q) Then, come January 2018, you created a Kickstarter page with the hope of raising $22,000 for your first printing run, and you ended up with $29,000, enough to make 800 games. Each contributor was, in essence, putting in a pre-order for the $25 game. You did a second run later in the year, hoping for $45,000 and you raised $67,000. Incredible!
A) Matt: It was a big leap of faith. I emailed a few people — a friend who was an administrator on a bigger Catholic-memes page — and their posts put it on the map. It spread on social media. Someone said, “Hey, a Catholic product from someone with an actual sense of humor.” It was striking a chord with young Catholics, who it was made for. We weren’t trying to pose; we were part of it.
Q) Now this is your full-time job, Matt.
A) Matt: It was always my dream to be self-employed but I never knew how. Then I lost my job at a nonprofit that was running out of money due to COVID. We’d just had our third baby. We had to go for it.
Q) Is it working?
A) Matt: We are by no means rolling in the dough. I have friends who are getting promotions and bigger paychecks. I could do that, but then I would be gone. I’m home. I look at myself as a business owner but also a very present father. We’re choosing to live with less money but then have the freedom to both be home. That’s amazing.
Q) How do you cut costs?
A) Matt: All our stuff is used.
Lisa: We struggle with it. As my uncle says, “We have champagne taste on a beer budget.” But there is always something to get handed down. I went to bring the trash out the other day, and as I was coming up, someone had left a meal with a treat on our doorstep. That kind of stuff happens, especially when things seem most dire.
Q) What have you learned from this entrepreneurial experience?
A) Matt: Even if it’s big, like asking for $22,000, make the leap and trust that if it’s meant to happen, it will. I realized the worst they can do is say no. I used to be deathly afraid of even calling the pizza place to order a pizza.
Lisa: Give it your all and trust. We have tried to launch a couple other things, thinking, “Oh, we have an audience, this will go great.” And it flopped. We learned to go deeper, not wider. When we start thinking in terms of dollar bill signs, that’s when we fail. We have to truly enter into it with a pure intention.
Q) And you may not be rolling in the dough, but your game has had a huge reach — it was played by Bishop Robert Barron, it inspired Halloween costumes.
A) Matt: The reviews on our website are all 5-stars. We’re hearing amazing things. Making something that people really love is such an encouragement to print it again and add more expansions. Now our focus is to look at the problem this game is solving. It strengthens friendships and builds communities, especially for a generation that says they’re alone. It brings families and friends together.
Q) What makes your house a Catholic home?
A) Lisa: We have imagery in our house to remind us Jesus loves us. We have beautiful images and a lot of different races. We write prayers on a little chalkboard. Some things, we’re rocky at.
Matt: We tried to do the Jesse Tree for Advent and our kids just fought over the ornaments. So, we’re just trying to live in a way that’s loving.
Lisa: It’s more free-flow than we experienced in our childhood. It’s more, “Let’s do our best.” After we do a meal prayer, we throw our hands up and shout, “Praise the Lord!” That’s a really fun way to love the Lord. We watch a lot of “Daniel Tiger.” It’s not all Catholic books and imagery. But it always circles back to that.
Learn more at catholiccardgame.com.
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