You need to do absolutely everything you can to minimise the hours you need (and therefore cost) and maximise your probability of a pass. In no particular order:
1. Join PPL/IR Europe - website pplir.org
2. Don't try and do the flying training part-time.
3. Don't try and continue to run a business while doing the flight training (One of my mistakes). You won't have the energy to do both.
4. Ensure you have access to sufficient money to see it through. Even with a first-time pass I went £3k over my budget. Ringing around trying to get a cash advance on a credit card while training is a distraction you don't need.
5. Something that helped me was to write up all the briefing / debriefing notes into a sort of expanded checklist to stress all the things you must and must not do in each stage of the flight. I think it runs to about 20 pages and I still use it as my training manual prior to renewals.
6. Never give up during the flight test. Apparently it is common to think you have failed quite early on during the test (I certainly felt like that) and if you let that effect your flying you will fail.
7. If you make a mistake, don't ignore it, point it out to the examiner so he / she knows you realise, and then do something about it!
8. Enjoy the debrief, the examiners are very impressive.
All the above is just my opinion, learnt the hard (expensive) way. Hope it helps. If I think of anything else, I'll post again.