Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig johnlsullivan.com. NS
Answer
johnlsullivan.com. 5 NS ns-1202.awsdns-22.org.
johnlsullivan.com. 5 NS ns-1605.awsdns-08.co.uk.
johnlsullivan.com. 5 NS ns-2009.awsdns-59.co.uk.
johnlsullivan.com. 5 NS ns-569.awsdns-07.net.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0