National Laser Institute Aesthetic Training Summary: NLI was among the earliest institutions to professionalize laser certification for medical aesthetics and as the popularity of lasers has declined, they have hastily expanded into high-cost, large-scale injectable training. Positioned in 3 permanent med-spa classrooms and led by an unknown staff of instructors and no apparent medical director, NLI attracts aesthetics trainees with glamour, broad CME claims (despite holes in their accreditation), and job placement assistance. However, when compared to industry-standard training models, their injectable courses lack transparency around instructor credentials, hands-on product allotments, and safety oversight—making it difficult for medical professionals to gauge true value before investing significant tuition.
National Laser Institute vs. Industry Standard Botox & Filler Training
| Feature | National Laser Institute (NLI) | Industry Standard / Ideal |
|---|---|---|
| Instructor Transparency | ✘ No published list of physician faculty or medical director credentials. Nobody higher than an RN listed in any of their public channels. | ✔ Instructors clearly listed with full bios, credentials, and scope of practice. MD’s, DO’s, or NP’s in full-practice authority states. |
| Hands-On Product Included | ✘ Website does not disclose how much Botulinum Toxin or filler each student injects. Paid patients used in clinical and remote settings which can pose a medico-legal risk. | ✔ Specific guarantee of toxin & filler amounts per student for meaningful practice |
| Class Size / Ratio | ✘ Large groups with unclear student-to-instructor ratio. Videos indicate very large >20 groups. | ✔ Small-group training (≤6) ensuring adequate hands-on time |
| Accreditation | ✔ CME/CE credit claimed, but details vary by course and state | ✔ Fully CME-accredited with transparent credit hours, valid across states |
| Post-Course Support | ✘ Limited information about follow-up or complication support | ✔ Ongoing mentorship, updates, and complication management guidance |
Updated September 7, 2025
National Laser Institute is one of the oldest aesthetic training programs, beginning, as their name would indicate, as a way to receive training and certification as a laser tech or other equipment that operates on electrical power. Only much later on, as the popularity of lasers declined, did they try to branch out in to the training of aesthetic injectables like Botulinum Toxin and Dermal Fillers. There is no overlap or synergies between laser training and injectables training (which are prescription substances) that are administered only by providers with higher levels of licensure and medical directorship. Tuition for Botox, Filler and PRP is one of the highest in the industry at over $6,000. Let’s see how NLI does in our multi-point review of information readily available online.
Multi-Point Review of National Laser Institute (NLI) Botox and Filler Training
Each Category shall receive a weighted score depending on how well the training meets the standard.
Total Score: 12 out of 50 Points.
NLI Ownership: Non-medical marketer “Louis the Laser Guy”.
1. CME Accreditation for MD, DO, NP, PA, RN's (Score 4 out of 10)
The word "certification" is used prominently by this training program, yet it has no formal legal meaning. It just means receipt of a piece of paper. The standard for post-graduate education is CME or CEU-accredited training that is peer reviewed and backed by an organization called a "joint sponsor" who is authorized to award AMA Category 1 Credits which are the only credits accepted for physicians, NP's, PA's and nurses.
NLI uses AAFP.org which is the organization that oversees Family Practice Physicians for their CME. However, when doing an independent search, their CME accreditation as listed at AAFP.org is for online courses and a large "catch-all" course. There is nothing specifically listed for each discipline which is awarded separate certification like the "PRP and PRF" module or the "Lip balancing" certifications that are touted on their website. It appears that they are trying to be "cheap" and award segments of a single large approved course and rename it as they see fit for the parts that the provider takes. Each sub-certificate is for an identical 8.3 hours which is completely implausible. This is not how accredited CME works and these certificates will fail any kind of scrutiny when reviewed by your medmal carrier or prospective medical director since the course titles on the certificate do not match with the accredited course offering at AAFP. NLI will need to give just one certificate titled "Medical Aesthetics Training: 4 Day Variety CME" to be compliant, and not multiple individual certificates as they currently do. These individual certificates are worthless "receipts" not true CME-accredited certification.
Only Louis, the non-medical owner, signs the certificates. It is standard that a certificate of completion would have someone licensed who was involved in the training and can attest to that proficiency sign the certificate.
Also, they tout accredited training in PRP/PRF but their actual certificates state no credit statement for this class and therefore is not accredited training.
NLI will need to have each module of training independently accredited in order to gain points here. Only a certificate with the title in bold above is accredited. Nothing else is.
2. Faculty Qualifications and Transparency (Score 0 out of 10)
Louis the Laser Guy, Owner of NLI Along with AMET, this is one of the most mysterious programs out there. Fronted by a non-medical marketer "Louis the Laser Guy", they are very secretive over the talent and qualifications of the medical people actually used to teach their courses.
In order to be compliant, faculty needs to be qualified, licensed in the state they are training the hands-on in, and free of any supervisory encumbrances. RN's cannot train without their legal supervising MD present on site at the same time. Yet this training does not list a single MD anywhere to be found. Using an AI-assisted deep search, there is still no name of a medical director anywhere. ListIQ is the only place that mentions a medical director only with the initials I.H.N.
Other faculty listed on the site include no MD, DO, NP or PA's. Only RN's and laser techs are listed and the list is quite small. This is simply unacceptable to drop $10,000 on training and not know the qualifications of who is training you.
3. Completeness of the First Level Course. (Score 3 out of 10)
It is difficult enough to calculate the cost of training when factoring in your time commitment and travel. However, when training is incomplete, or you may have to purchase the product for hands-on (See Point 4 below), that makes it even harder.
NLI does not publish any agendas for any of their aesthetic injection courses. Just main titles. However it appears that certain things are excluded from the base $2,450 Toxin and Filler course. These exclusions appear to be cannulas, lips, and other uses of facial toxin and fillers that are often covered by other companies main course offerings. The price to add-on these "advanced" level trainings is $6,450 which includes PRP (without microneedling) that does not have any credit. This is one of the most expensive in the industry for a full injectable curriculum. And there are still no online agendas to confirm what is actually being taught, or how your time is spent. Each sub-course cannot be an identical 8.3 hours either, so a detailed agenda would be a great addition for shoppers.
4. Transparency Regarding Hands-On Product Provided in Tuition Cost. (Score 0 out of 5)
NLI's training courses do not guarantee any level of hands-on product to be provided. They do state that they have the "most hands-on training in the country" without substantiating the claim. They also state that they supply 100% of the class models. This means you will treat someone you will never see or follow up with again, and the instructors will earn additional profit from you treating their already paying patients.
The industry standard is to provide a certain amount of toxin and filler for hands-on use UP FRONT and include it in the tuition price. Please also see the precautions for using paying patients in your training below.
5. Maximum Hands-On Class Size (0 out of 5)
Looking here it appears that the class can be as large as they want it to be with a
single faculty instructor. Everywhere are photos of rooms with 10 or more providers in a class, some photos have 20-30. This is too large for any serious training environment where instructors want to be certain that everyone is learning the material and has opportunity to ask questions.You are paying for these oversized facilities, but are you getting anything from it. Or are you just paying their rent and sitting in a huge class?
The standard for a training course should be a cap of around 5-6 providers per instructor for the best hands-on treatment experience. If an organization has more demand, they should open more dates, not cram in additional attendees and dilute your experience for the same tuition cost.
6. Location Transparency (Score 1 out of 3)
Locations are stated for their 3 training centers in Arizona, Illinois and Texas. The other sites are not permanent facilities and do not have their locations disclosed. Are these clinical facilities or hotels? Who is teaching and overseeing these sites? You do not know.
The industry standard is to tell you the address of the training upfront and in public online. Not after they take your money for a non-refundable training.
7. No Fake Boards, Fake Society, or Membership Upsells (Score 2 out of 5)
Memberships, renewals and such are not required for any kind of training status over the long-term. Training is training. Aesthetics is not a medical specialty. No one company is not an authority for this industry.
NLI does not appear to sell any annually renewable memberships or grant fake titles after completing a certain number of classes. They do not present themselves as a Board or arbiter of the standards of care in aesthetics. That is good.
However, the multiple fragmenting of their training into levels (also against how their CME accreditation is earned) can make for some expensive packages just to get the basic training that patients want.
8. Offers a Blended Online plus Live Learning Environment (Score 2 out of 5)
NLI frequently states that all courses require some form of livestream component but fail to show any screenshots of the learning platform or how their CME credits are awarded broken down by online or live hours. Their CME accreditation at AAFP has two fully online courses registered, but it is unclear how many hours of online vs live credits are awarded for the aesthetic training days. As mentioned above, the individual aesthetic injection modules are not independently accredited, but only the full $10,000 course is.
So, they do make use of online materials, but it is impossible to judge the quality and extent to which these are used.
9. No Risk of Paid Models at the Live Training (Score: 0 of 2)
NLI is a big mystery regarding how much hands-on experience each aesthetic injection attendee will receive. At their 3 permanent locations, it appears that patients of the practice are used, who pay for their treatments, even if students are performing them. If NLI is getting this additional revenue stream from trainees, then their value for the price paid seems even lower.
If the patients in these 3 sites are treated by legal providers with proper supervision who are licensed in the state, and the consent form clearly lists those providers as responsible, with the patients able to return to have complications addressed, then they are fulfilling all legal obligations for supplying patients for hands-on trainees.
However, for the dozen locations where NLI does not have a presence, any treatments of paying patients in temporary locations (possibly by providers not licensed and properly supervised in that state) represents a illegal healthcare clinic for hire and you, the attendee, will be additionally liable.
How do you know? You need the name of the instructor in writing, that instructor needs to be licensed in the state, and have a supervising MD in that state where applicable. Then no paying patients should be treated unless they are consented by the teaching provider with follow up from a local clinical facility. Surely, if NLI had nothing to hide, they would publish their faculty qualifications and location information.
10. General Truthfulness and Accessibility (Score: 0 of 5)
The complete lack of names and faces behind this training is the most concerning and challenge to trustworthiness. It starts with reading the blog from the serial marketer owner. Then in their FAQ, most of the questions do not assist the provider in making a decision, but promote how lucrative the industry is and how their training will make you rich and work less. One of the FAQ's state that cannulas for dermal fillers are the gold standard of safety, yet we have case reports from 2019 that intra-arterial injection in "advanced" filler areas like tear troughs do not happen any less with cannulas even in expert hands.
Then there is this "FAQ":
PDO Threads is the highest margin most profitable service. One sentence. Nothing about safety or efficacy. Nothing about the declining interest in Google searches over the past year. They simply want to sell their highest level package so they make money from people who think this service will be "lucrative". Makes one wonder how many other risky practices they are will to teach chasing margins and profit over safety.
They also have this strange "grievance process" outline. Seems like NLI is the sole arbiter of all grievances with no mention of an independent body. There is also no terms and conditions regarding rescheduling, or refunds.
This organization may be a good choice for laser certification, but their hastily added, and understaffed injectable, and non-laser aesthetic courses have a lot of gaps and holes that you will need to fill before giving them $10,000 of your money.
Final Score: 12 out of a possible 50
Final Recommendation… Consider for laser training. You have better options with more transparent and qualified faculty elsewhere.
Frequently Asked Questions: National Laser Institute Injectable Training
Who teaches NLI’s injectable training courses?
NLI does not publish the names or medical credentials of its injectable trainers on its website, and no physician instructors or medical director are publicly listed—with only initials (I.H.N.) appearing in a third-party directory.
How much Botox or filler do I get to inject during the hands-on session?
NLI does not disclose any guaranteed amounts of toxin or filler included in tuition. The website claims “most hands-on training,” but without specifying the product allocation, it’s difficult to assess real practice value.
What is the average class size for injectable training?
Photos and descriptions suggest classes are large—sometimes 20–30 providers per instructor—rather than small-group formats (<6), which may limit individualized instruction and hands-on time.
Are live models provided by NLI for student injections?
Yes, NLI uses paying patients in their permanent locations for hands-on practice. However, in temporary or destination sites, it’s unclear how treatments are supervised or legally permitted by the instructor’s licensure.
Is there any post-course mentorship or follow-up support?
NLI provides little to no information about mentorship, complication support, or continuing education following the course—making it unclear how attendees are supported after the initial training.
