Feeling stuck AF

Whats up everyone, looking to get some advice from you all on what to do next in my career, as I am feeling like my future is extremely unpredictable at the moment and my options are limited.

I was laid off from my first AE role in June after only 10 months. Prior to that, I was an SDR for about 3 years and was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to jump from SDR to AE at a new company.

While all the layoffs across the industry have been extremely painful for many, I feel as though I am in a trickier situation than most, as the job market is now flooded with qualified AE's that have way more experience and quota attainment to talk about than I do.

I feel like no matter how hard I try and how much networking I do on LinkedIn, at the end of the day I have no chance of landing an AE role at a decent company. I even somehow managed to make it to the final round stages of interviewing with Hubspot, only to be told by 3 separate Sales Managers that I interviewed well but my lack of experience is a big red flag.

It seems as though every open AE role I am finding today has a 2-4 year minimum requirement in selling experience and getting a first round interview has been nearly impossible. And the thing is, I get it! Why would anyone want to even think about hiring me when they are getting flooded with applicants who have clearly been successful for a significant amount of time?

I was fortunate enough to find an AE role at a company one of my old fraternity brothers founded, but the pay is shit, I am a contract employee so dont have any benefits, I only get paid on deals I source myself, and there is absolutely no structure to the sales team. Also, we sell to music festivals and other large scale events so it's just just very different than what I am used to selling from a traditional SaaS sales perspective, as none of these guys are on LinkedIn and it is way more of a transactional sale. I also do not have a quota and the main product I am selling is actually free so I am worried about not having any sort of metrics to discuss down the road. We have 2 other SaaS products that cost money but they were released 3 months ago and from the calls I have had, there is still alot of work that needs to be done in terms of understanding the actual value we are providing and appropriate pricing to charge customers for them.

At then end of the day, I'd like to get back to a more traditional SaaS AE role but feel like its impossible at the moment. I have even thought about taking a step back to be an SDR again, but really would prefer not to do that, as I know I have what it takes to be successful in an AE role.

Any suggestions on how I can get recruiters attention? Position myself differently?

Any thoughts would be appreciated!