Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig PHQholding.com. NS
Answer
PHQholding.com. 2 NS ns36.domaincontrol.com.
PHQholding.com. 2 NS ns35.domaincontrol.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0