Burnley businessman and long-time friend of This is Money, Dave Fishwick, is to be made Officer of the British Empire (OBE) after being selected in the 2026 King's Birthday Honours List.Mr Fishwick, who has been a columnist for This is Money, is being honoured for his services to finance, business and charity.Speaking exclusively to us, Dave says he is delighted to receive the award – 'not bad for a boy from Nelson who once worked as a builder's labourer, draining rain out of his boot holes!'The 55-year-old has had two Netflix movies made about his battle to start his own bank, shaking up the financial establishment in the process. Rory Kinnear played him on screen.Earlier this year, Bank of Dave the Musical had a two-week run in Leicester, and it is expected to hit London's West End either later this year, or early next year.Dave, who doesn't have any qualifications, added: 'From no GCSEs to an OBE, I want young people to have self-belief that nothing beats hard work.'I couldn't have done it without a great team behind me helping run the business, including my right-hand man David H, alongside my brilliant wife Nicola who has been by my side for 32 years.'Honoured: Dave (pictured with Rory Kinnear, who plays him in both Bank of Dave films on Netflix, will receive an OBE for his services to finance, business and charityIn 2010 he set up his own bank in the wake of the 2008 financial crash.Burnley Savings and Loans, affectionately known as Bank of Dave, operates from his beloved hometown of Burnley, Lancashire and loans money to individuals and businesses who found themselves turned away by high street banks.Part of the inspiration came as local businesses struggled to get finance to buy vehicles from Fishwick's minibus firm, and he felt banking was no longer local. In essence, it's a community bank operated not for profit, with all surplus money going to good causes - and it's still going strong today.The self-made multi-millionaire has built up several other businesses from scratch, including his minibus business in Colne – and it's safe to say he ruffled a few feathers in the banking world, with his battle with them featuring in many Channel Four documentaries.Born in 1972, he was raised in a modest terrace with an outside toilet in a town that was slipping into decline after the collapse of the textile industry and closure of local coal mines.'My dad had two jobs: a farm labourer in the morning and he worked in the mill in the afternoon fixing the looms,' Dave recalls.'He did 6am until 2pm on the farm, then 2pm until 10pm at the mill, and my mum worked in the same mill as a weaver.'Bullied at school because of his NHS prescription glasses, Dave dropped out of formal education aged 14, and by 16 was working as a builder's labourer.'I was up and down ladders all day with buckets of cement in each hand for £27.50 a week.'He recalls a 'fork-in-the-road' point one bitterly cold day.'It was a moment of recognising that I wanted something different,' he recalls. 'You start making yourself a roadmap, some achievable goals. That first step can be tiny, but it's the hardest one.'It led Dave to embark on a money-making experiment. Passionate about cars, he visited garages and asked them to take a chance on his salesman skills.One let him clean and sell a Vauxhall Cavalier. Anything over £70 he could keep. He got £97 - earning £27 for two hours work, the equivalent of a week's wages. He was just 17 and 'onto something'.It was the start of years of hustling and juggling endless makeshift roles - yet cars remained his first love.After spotting a gap in the market for companies selling vans and minibuses, he set up David Fishwick Minibus Sales in 2003. Today, the business operates all over the world, although its headquarters remains in the same modest Colne garage.This is Money visited Dave in Burnley in 2014, and from there have always kept a great relationship.'I want to thank King Charles III and the Prime Minister for putting me on the list,' Fishwick says. 'I would love to put an arm around my 16-year-old self, working that incredibly hard job, starving hungry, that everything is going to be okay and work out.'Young people today are afraid to make mistakes, but my message is: don't be. Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery – there's no substitute for hard graft.'