It was a message with which pretty much every Republican in the audience could identify, from the ideologue to the pragmatist faced with leading the party out of its long winter of electoral isolation.
"Here's some advice from a guy from New Jersey: Don't be afraid," said Gov. Chris Christie in his speech to the California Republican Party convention on Saturday afternoon.
"There are always going to be people to tell us that the country isn't ready for conservatism, " he said, "that you have to go along with whatever's the policy that the media or big donors in the party would like you to follow."
Christie, in a speech that lasted just under 25 minutes to a crowded downtown Sacramento ballroom, was ostensibly talking about the national GOP challenge in the 2016 presidential race -- a race he still seems to be thinking about taking on, even in the wake of some recent tough sledding in the Garden State and nationally.
But the message may have been just as applicable to California's GOP leaders, who have for more than a decade hotly debated how to rejuvenate Republican chances in a state where Democrats have long dominated.