8602418479?profile=originalLaura Jimenez knew she was worth more than she was making, so she started her own business to prove it.

The Texas native opened Rockville, Maryland-based FireClean, an emergency cleaning and restoration service, in 1996 at the age of 27 after doing similar jobs for others. Jimenez took pride in the quality of her work and thought becoming her own boss would strengthen her family’s finances and allow more time with the children.

Employers “were not paying me what I was supposed to get paid,” Jimenez said. Even though the work is difficult and the hours long -- her current crew of six is on-call nights and weekends -- Jimenez says, “I love what I do.”

While the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce projects the number of Latino-owned firms like Jimenez’s will top 4 million this year and funnel $661 billion dollars into the economy, they lag behind in average number of employees and annual revenue, and suffer from a higher failure rate. Boosting their sales to match the U.S. average for non-Latino businesses would have added $1.38 trillion, or 8.5 percent, to gross domestic product in 2012, according to research issued Wednesday by Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. READ MORE AT BLOOMBERG BUSINESS

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