How to break through as a small channel?

I have been posting for a while now, ranging my content a little bit, but it seems like every video I post gets around the same amount if views (I know my upload schedule has not been great, but I am slowly improving in that area). My main problem seems to be watchtime, as I am getting people clicking on the video, but only 1 or 2 actually watching through. I feel like I edit my content quite well so I'm not quite sure why I am losing retention so quick.

If anyone has any tips that they used to get past that initial stage of low retention and underwhelming progression of interest video to video, it would be great to hear!