cash flow positive just means you had more money coming in that going out. Profit is calculated on an accrual basis, not a cash flow basis. For instance, if I sell you a car, I can recognize the revenue from that before you give me the cash. The debt you owe me is now an asset. On the other hand, there are things like depreciation of assets which count as expenses even though no cash changes hands right now. These are just a couple of examples on how cash flow and profit are not the same, but to get the full gist of it, you need to cover basically what gets covered in an intro accounting course.