No he simply says "bid on those brand name keywords".

I can help by giving you an example and its actual results.

I hope this helps.

On our site, for a certain word, just like in your case, the page is named let's say www.example.com/real-examples

When you search for "real examples" it is in top 10 but if you search for "real example" then it is not even in top 50.

I still don't think on-page adjustments decide the rankings on themselves as there are more factors involved.

Anyway, I hope this helps you a bit.

No it doesn't matter. If it's an Exact Match, Search Engines still see it as one, with or without the dash.