Some guys just seem destined for heroic careers.

They can't sit silently through meetings; they're not content to simply follow orders. They're enterprising and outspoken. They wear their ambition like shiny cuff links, commanding our attention with every gesture and reminding us that we should all bring more passion, creativity, and backbone to our jobs. Except this isn't destiny—it's determination. (The rules have changed since your dad was climbing the corporate ladder. Check out more of the New Tools for Career Success.)

The entrepreneurs you'll meet on the next few pages are like that. They made their mark by thinking big, acting fast, and setting clear goals. "Success is about being proactive," says Dean Shepherd, Ph.D., a professor of strategic entrepreneurship at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business. "It's about deciding whether you'll take the risks to pursue the opportunities that you find attractive."

So ask yourself: Are you making the kinds of career moves that can close the gap between you and the top brass? You may be good at your job, but who isn't? The top execs with the biggest paychecks were good once too. Now they're great. And that's a leap you can make.

In a 2010 study in the Journal of Applied Psychology, researchers discovered that people who took more initiative had better relationships with their bosses and a better outlook on their future. And in a more recent Dutch study, the most proactive employees-the ones who looked for smarter ways their companies could operate-were assessed by their coworkers as more likely to perform better.

So stop doing only what you're told, and start being disruptive. Do that and you'll soon be the kind of career hero people admire.

1. Improve an Old Process

On a routine errand in 2011, Andy Katz-Mayfield waited 10 minutes for a drugstore employee to show up with the key to the razor case. Then he spent $24 on four cartridges and some shaving cream. When he returned home, he called his buddy Jeff Raider, who a few years before had cofounded the eyeglasses company Warby Parker. "I think this model is broken," said Katz-Mayfield. "We can build something better."

So the two men set out to make blades that would rival those already on the drugstore shelves, and they aimed to sell them at half the price. Within six months, they'd found a German production facility to make their product. They bought the factory and gave their shaving company an ironic name, Harry's. (Get it?)

By 2013, the guys were selling cartridges for $2 apiece—a bargain by five-blade standards. And after their first sales push proved to be successful, investors who had been initially hesitant started to line up. Within a year, Harry's had $122.5 million in funding.

Be a problem solver
You don't have to take on a billion-dollar industry to have an impact. In fact, it's often small things that make the biggest splash. "When we started Harry's, we were just trying to solve an issue we experienced personally," says Raider.

So take a look around your workplace and consider how tasks are being accomplished right now. Disorganized meetings, wasted office space, poorly managed social media accounts—they're all opportunities for improvement.

The challenge is simple: "Go find the problems and then develop solutions for them," says H. Albert Napier, Ph.D., a professor at Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business. "If you're not trying to improve your company, you'll be left behind." And years from now you might end up reading about the former cubicle dweller next door, now a billionaire.

2. Outwork Your Competition

You can thank Michael Kirban and Mark Rampolla for the ubiquity of coconut water in CrossFit boxes and health food stores. In 2004, Kirban was living in Brooklyn, rolling on inline skates from store to store to hand out samples of his unheard-of new beverage, Vita Coco. There was nothing else like it, he told shopkeepers. He'd repeated that line hundreds of times before a GNC store manager casually said, "Someone else was here last week selling that stuff."

That stuff was called Zico. Even the packaging looked the same.

By sheer coincidence, Zico's creator, Mark Rampolla, was also embracing a grassroots approach to cracking the coconut water market in New York City. Two men, two similar products, one market.

It was war. Kirban promptly doubled the number of routes he skated each day. When he saw Zico on the shelf, he rearranged the products to make Vita Coco more prominent. And later he hired a seasoned salesman to help him take over more shelf space.

"The idea was to crush Zico," says Kirban. "We would sit around in meetings and literally say, 'What is a good Zico killer?'"

Rampolla, unwilling to roll over, started plotting counterattacks. On occasion his sales guys could be found outside Vita Coco's office handing out Zico samples. When Kirban signed an endorsement deal with Madonna, Rampolla brought in NBA star Kevin Garnett. Kirban then retaliated with Rihanna in a pineapple bikini.

By constantly trying to out-maneuver each other, both companies grew exponentially, and today the coconut water market is worth a staggering $400 million. Vita Coco owns 60 percent of it.

Pinpoint your target
People with clearly defined rivals push themselves harder and achieve more, says Grant Cardone, author of If You're Not First, You're Last.
Kirban experienced this one-upmanship firsthand, which is why he's glad Rampolla stayed on his heels over the past decade. "If you don't have competition, you start to sit back," he says.

So who are you going to outperform? If you don't know yet, set your sights on a colleague who's a couple of levels above you on the organizational chart. "You need to be looking out in front," Cardone says. "Don't look at the desk next to you. That's not the guy."
Figure out what you can do to prove you're better, and then do it over and over. The quicker you can make the other guy superfluous, the sooner you can take his office.